REMEMBERING 9/11, THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER

It seems a long time since the attacks on 9/11/2001; and it seems like yesterday. That’s a trick your mind plays on you with traumatic memories: putting a healing distance between then and now, all the while indelibly imprinting the memory so it always seems fresh; easily recalled as clearly today as when it occurred.

In 2001 I was living in Michigan, a business man who worked out of his home office. That morning, I got my coffee and walked down to my office. It was just a few minutes before 9am on a crystal clear autumn morning. My office had a large window, and as I sipped my coffee I looked out at squirrels playing on my lawn.

As always, I turned on my computer. Back then, Yahoo was my Homepage. As it booted-up, I glanced over and saw the “breaking news” banner: A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

I walked over to the living room and turned on the news. Against the backdrop of a clear blue sky, the live feed from New York City showed the North Tower of the World Trade Center, a huge bloom of smoke pouring from a gigantic rent high on the side of the building.

The commentators in the news studio were speculating as to what could have caused a plane to somehow drift off its flight path and into the World Trade Center. They weren’t sure at that point if it was a small private plane, or a commercial aircraft. At that moment (it was now 9:03am) the second airliner came into view on the screen. A nano-second later, it crashed into the side of the South Tower.

I think I said something trite, like “OMFG!”; and sat my coffee down with a shaking hand.

One female commentator asked if something could be badly wrong with the local Air Traffic Control computers; perhaps erroneously vectoring planes into Mid-Town Manhattan. That question was just as quickly quelled by her partner, who stated (correctly) that this must be a deliberate act of terrorism.

At some point after that, people started jumping out of the burning buildings.

I called my wife, who was working at a local hospital; leaving her a message to call me.

At 9:39, the third plane struck the Pentagon.

I think at that point, I must have gone into a altered state of consciousness; a sort of state of shock. I grew weirdly calm, detached, emotionally uninvolved with the disasters unfolding on the television.

Leaving the television on in the background, I decided this was a good day to paint my house.

Now, for those who know me, that is proof enough that I was in shock. I am not the home-fixer-upper type. But that morning, as the Towers collapsed (“Huh, you don’t see that every day!”) and Jet fighters were scrambled as there were reports of a fourth plane heading toward the Capital, I think my subconscious needed something exceedingly mundane to ground itself in a reality it could process.

I am a veteran of Special Forces, and someone who has faced very difficult and deadly situations before. I don’t normally “lose it”.

But on that otherwise beautiful September day, Barry had “checked out of the net” (as we used to say on the Teams). Elvis had left the building.

That afternoon and early evening, first my wife and children; then my friends and neighbors gathered at my home. I was relatively calm and still detached, discussing somberly the events unfolding when something happened that broke through my detachment; shattering the barrier my mind was busily erecting to protect me: My wife’s father, a happy alcoholic, decided that so many people in one place constituted a party. He put on music, people began to relax and laugh, talking about other things.

For me, it seemed almost sacrilegious to be partying when so many people were dead or dying, when our country had just suffered the greatest attack since Pearl Harbor.

I exploded. I don’t lose it very often, but I did that evening. I upbraided my father-in-law and those sharing his merriment: Didn’t they understand how inappropriate this was, I scolded?

Before making a complete fool of myself, I walked away. Stepping outside onto my lawn, I stood there in the Michigan evening twilight, and allowed myself to cry.

_______________________________________________________________________

Here is a compilation of news coverage that morning, after the first plane struck but before the second; as they occurred that day.

Here is Bryan Gumbel reporting that morning just after the Pentagon was hit:

SYRIAN POLICY: THEN AND NOW; ITS BLOWING IN THE WIND

That was then, this is now.

Then there was a Republican President. Then Democrat Presidential Candidate Obama said:

Obama:  The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. – Interview with Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe, December 20, 2007 

Now President Obama seems prepared to take military action against Syria, without even seeking the authorization by the United Nations or Congress.

Then a certain Democrat Senator from Delaware threatened:

The president has no constitutional authority to take this country to war against a country of 70 million people unless we’re attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I would move to impeach him. Joe Biden, In a December 2007 interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews

Now Vice President Biden is extolling the virtue of taking action without the impediment of Congressional approval.

The blatant hypocrisy on display would all be cynically amusing if it weren’t set against the backdrop of a Syrian policy that defies reason or explanation.

For two years the Obama Administration has ignored or dithered while thousands have died in Civil War that has become a humanitarian disaster. However, it is not our disaster; and reasonable people can disagree over wither or not we have any legitimate interests as a nation in intervention.

So why now?

Because a brutal dictator has used chemical weapons against his own people; who he was happily killing with conventional weapons for a couple of years now?

IF that is all it takes to justify intervention, then Senators Obama and Biden should have been four-square behind then President Bush for intervening in Iraq. There, another equally brutal dictator used chemical weapons to murder his own people (the Kurds). But, again, then it was a Republican president; so the standards were different and the criticism strident from Obama, Biden, and Democrats in general.

Then, President Obama called for a regime change in Damascus:

For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside. – President Obama, August 16, 2012

Now the White House goes out of its way to reassure Assad (and his Big Brother, Vladimir Putin):

I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are NOT ABOUT REGIME CHANGE. – White House Press Secretary and spokesman, Jay Carney, August 27, 2013

Then, President Obama drew a “red line” in the sand:

…a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation. – Obama at the White House on August 20, 2012

Now, despite Assad’s use of such chemical weapons the President warned would violate his “red line”, the President seems to be trying to find wiggle room:

We’re not considering any open-ended commitment. We’re not considering any boots on the ground approach. I have not made any decisions. – Obama in a public appearance after a meeting with Baltic leaders, today

All this helps explain why Obama today finds himself without credibility; at home or abroad. Nobody outside of the his own Administration and the most ardent Obamites like Chris Matthews take this man seriously when it comes to foreign policy; in Syria and elsewhere. Even our most steadfast ally in the world, Great Britain, has backed away from the President (not surprising, really, considering how for the last 5 years Obama has gone out of his way to put distance between us and our friend across the Pond).

His policy blows in the wind; entirely hostage to whims of the moment and politics at home. His calculus is not whether or not his actions and words will further American power and influence; but how it will influence his domestic agenda and the politics of the next election.

American influence in the Middle East has never been lower. Into the vacume we are leaving, other Powers are stepping in. Putin’s Russia is particularly eager to regain the influence they lost there after the ’73 Yom Kippur War, and Anwar Sadat kicked the Soviets out of Egypt. There is even interest in a better relationship with Israel, as that long-time American ally feels increasingly friendless as a result of its chilly relationship with the Obama Administration. And Islamic fundamentalists and radicals are pleased at our decaying position, and just as eager to replace us as the dominant force in the Middle East. The Iranians want to create their “Shite Crescent” of control; while the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda want to see a pseudo-Caliphate created.

Meanwhile, to appear to be strong and involved at last, Obama prepares to launch a billion dollar cruise missile strike against questionable targets with ambiguous goals; desperately seeking a way out of the corner he has painted himself into when he drew his “red line” in the Syrian sand.

A foreign policy blowing in the wind.

GOD INDEED SIDES WITH THE BIGGEST BATTALIONS

Though sometimes human genius can temporarily stay the tide.

A great general (alternately either Turenne or Napoleon) famously responded to a question of who God sides with in war by quipping: “Whichever side has the biggest battalions!”

While numbers and material do not always a successful campaign make; history does show that military victory tends to go to the side with more. More men, more supplies, more (and better) weaponry, etc.  Against this purely physical equation must be factored the morale and quality of the soldiers involved, the ability of their commanders, terrain, and other ”force multipliers” and intangibles that impact on the final outcome.

That said, the big kid usually wins the fight.

Like boxers, a larger and heavier fighter might be slower than the feisty banter-weight. In the first rounds, the quicker fighter can often land many more shots on the lumbering heavy-weight. But if his lighter blows don’t achieve a knock-out; if the big guy can take a punch, then time is against the light-weight. In a slugfest, the longer it goes on the more likely the big man will land a heavy blow; and beat the little guy down.

THE EXCEPTIONS OF MILITARY GENIUS AND FORCE MULTIPLIERS

Throughout history we see examples of smaller but better trained and led armies winning victories over a larger, less tactically adroit opponent. However, if initial tactical victories cannot be parlayed into a quick and victorious conclusion to hostilities, time tends to favor the “big battalions”.

A commander of genius can be a powerful “force multiplier”.  Alexander the Great, perhaps history’s greatest of “Great Captains”, was able to defeat the much larger Persian Empire with a small but elite army; doing so in just a few short years. His campaigns were characterized by rapid movements and bold action; and he possessed a gift for finding his enemy’s strategic jugular. Darius made many mistakes as well, never managing to effectively leverage Persia’s vast resources of money, manpower, and geographic space to his advantage (in his defense, Alexander was a master of overcoming such adversities).

Hernán Cortés proved another exception to the rule: with an army of less than 1,000 Spanish adventurers he managed, in just two years, to overthrow the greatest power in the “New World”: the Aztec Empire. Though the Aztecs had geography, wealth, and vast numbers of savage warriors on their side; they were at a disadvantage against the bold, brilliant, and opportunistic Conquistador. Cortés used every diplomatic and religious advantage  Montezuma presented him; turning his enemy’s superstitions and uncertainty as to the Spanish visitor’s true identity (Montezuma, a former priest, initially mistook Cortés for the returned Aztec deity, Quetzalcoatl ) to advantage. Cortés’ abilities as a commander aside, the Spaniards possessed other “force multipliers”: superior weapons technology (steel armor and weapons, crossbows, and  gunpowder weapons); “fear” weapons, the Aztecs being terrified (at least initially) of the Spaniards gunpowder, their cavalry (horses were not native to the New World), and their large and fierce mastiff dogs (only very small breeds were known in Mexico, and these were a food source); and the ultimate “force multiplier”, germ warfare: the Spaniards inadvertently brought Smallpox to Mexico, which devastated the Aztec population.

GERMANY UBER ALLES: EXCEPT WHEN ITS NOT

But more often history shows that of all the military advantages, “quantity has a quality all its own”. Military genius alone has a very hard time when pitted against even a mildly competent enemy possessed of greater resources of manpower and material. If you doubt that, just ask the superb generals of Hitler’s Wehrmacht about their unpleasant experience fighting the Russians on the Eastern Front!

In 1941, the German war machine was a very fine-tuned one, indeed. The German Panzer Division was a proto-typical combined arms force; in which rapidly maneuvering armored forces were supported closely by mounted infantry, mobile artillery, and airpower. The vaunted Blitzkrieg strategy had conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France; sweeping the British off the continent in the process. The Balkans were overrun in spring of that year, and in summer of ’41 Hitler unleashed his Panzers on Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Though sure of being outnumbered by “the Bolshevik hordes”, the German’s were confident in the many “force multipliers” they possessed: mobility, firepower, experience, and the talents of an exceptional officer corps. While perhaps not rising to the level of “Great Captain”, the German generals Guderian and Von Manstein were brilliant and farsighted commanders.

However, Russia had the ultimate “force multiplier”: population. Germany, a nation of less than 70 million was engaging a nation of 169 million; led by a dictator ruthless enough to use this advantage to bloody purpose. Russia also had vast industrial capability; out-producing the Germans in all categories of material (and what they couldn’t readily produce, their American ally gave them in abundance).

Germany was the ultimate example of the feisty over-achiever; up against Russia, the biggest bully on the block. Germany had to achieve a knock-out blow early-on, before Stalin could mobilize his vast resources. Manpower aside, Russia could also rely on two other resources: vast geographical space to trade in return for time (to mobilize and respond); and the extreme Russian weather conditions. Not just winter, which was of legendarily harshness. What proved more troubling for the Wehrmacht, which needed to maneuver rapidly in order to maintain their “blitzkrieg”, was “General Mud”: the muddy morass Russia’s roads became with the Spring and Autumn rainy season.

Germany failed in its one true chance to win the war and strike knock out blow against Russia in ’41; when Hitler turned Guderian’s panzers away from Moscow in August, while there was sufficient time to capture the city before first mud and then snow brought the panzers to a halt; in order to capture the secondary objective of Kiev. By the time Guderian was back on track, the year was too far advanced and time was against the German forces. They ultimately ground to a halt within site of the Kremlin’s onion domes.

For the next four years, the Germans continued to land hard blows on the Russian giant. But each time the Russian got back on his feet; while the German came away with a bruised and bloody fist. Ultimately, the “big battalions” ground the qualitatively superior Wehrmacht into dust.

Other historical examples of this include Hannibal attempting with a single well led army to defeat the overwhelming might of the Roman Republic; Charles XII of Sweden leading a relatively tiny army deep into Russia against the vast resources of Peter the Great’s Russia; and Robert E. Lee and the feisty Army of Northern Virginia fruitlessly attempting a knockout punch against the lumbering behemoth that was the Army of the Potomac.

HANNIBAL AD PORTUS

In 218 BC, the city-state of Carthage began its second war against the emerging power in the Mediterranean, the Roman Republic. While itself possessed of a far-flung colonial empire, Carthage started the war with no material advantages. Her native army was small and relatively unmotivated; and was only made formidable by the hiring of mercenary warriors from far and near. Once a naval power, her fleet had been bested by the Romans in the First Punic War a generation earlier; and now Rome had both a larger and better trained army, as well as naval superiority. Rome was already a powerhouse in 218BC, with vast reserves of manpower and wealth (the sinews of war).

What Carthage had in its favor was the special ability of one man: Hannibal Barca. Son of another great soldier (Hamilcar Barca), he brought to the equation an intangible factor, that being true military genius. Starting in Spain, which had been added to the Carthaginian Empire by the campaigns of his father, he started the war by aggressively seizing the initiative and invading Italy; something the Romans were unprepared for. Over the next 15 years, he and a relatively small but loyal army marched up-and-down Italy; sustaining themselves on enemy soil, inflicting defeats upon their Roman enemies.

In the first three years, Hannibal won three smashing victories over as many Roman armies; each bigger than his own. In the earlier boxing analogy, Hannibal was the light-on-his-feet boxer who slips his clumsier opponent’s punches and lands three knock-down blows.  But Rome could take a punch; she was nothing if not resilient. Each time, the Romans got back up off the mat, dusted themselves off and came back for more.

In time, the Romans learned to avoid Hannibal’s knock-down punches. Their armies got lighter on their feet and learned to box back. In Scipio, who started the war as young aid-de-camp to his father, one of the Roman generals at the start of the conflict; Rome eventually found a commander as wily as the one-eyed Carthaginian master. At Zama, in 202 BC, Scipio the Roman heavy weight finally maneuvered the light weight Carthaginian into a corner; and delivered the knock-out punch.

Hannibal, who at one point stood at the gates of Rome, was unable to force an early decision upon the stubborn Romans. The clock was not his friend; he needed early knock out. Given time, Rome’s greater material advantages came to bear and wore down their smaller opponent.

THE TINY LION AGAINST THE ENORMOUS MOUSE [1]

In 1700, the Great Northern War pitted a coalition of larger nations against tiny Sweden. Though small, the Swedes had proven to be formidable soldiers. Led by a dynasty of warrior kings, the Vasa, Sweden had conquered and controlled an empire surrounding the Baltic Sea. The allied nations against her – Denmark, Poland/Saxony, and Russia – all wanted a piece of that Swedish Empire for themselves.

The allies chose to attack Sweden at the accession of its young king, Charles (Karl) XII; who attained the throne of Sweden in 1697 at the age of fifteen. The belligerents, attempting to take advantage of the boy’s inexperience, attacked from all quarters in 1700. While possessing overwhelming numbers, they hadn’t counted upon the ”X” factor: the young king of Sweden’s natural military talent.

As with the young Alexander of Macedon, Charles XII was one of those rare men of native military genius, which comes to bloom at a very young age. Like the masterly Macedonian, Charles took command of his army at 18 years old in 1700, his nation beset on all fronts. He proved a daring, resolute, aggressive and ever intrepid commander. Again like Alexander, he directed his troops personally in battle from the saddle, often personally leading his bodyguard squadrons of horse in the decisive charge. Though Sweden was small, it was led by a lion!

Charles immediately took the initiative; acting first against the closest of his thee enemies. Landing a force of 8,000 on the Danish home island of Zealand, Charles rapidly compelled the Danes to submit to peace in August 1700; knocking out the first of the allied belligerents. He then turned on Russia, rapidly deploying his forces across the Baltic to Swedish Ingria, then facing invasion by Russian forces.

The Russia of 1700 was only newly emerging into the modern age. Under its young Czar, Peter  I (not yet “the Great”) it was attempting to take its place among the power of Europe, at Sweden’s expense. Peter possessed a large army, levied and newly trained by Western European military advisors. However, it was an untried force, large and clumsy in execution. Peter himself, though an active and enthusiastic amateur, lacked Charles’ personal courage in battle. Time-after-time he would flinch or flee from personal hazard; leaving his army leaderless and demoralized when facing his Swedish nemesis.  He and his vast nation, Russia, were comparatively an enormous mouse.

Charles met and defeated the much larger Russian forces first at Narva, in October 1700. Here, Charles led his army of 10,000 men forward against three-times as many Russians, defending breastworks of a fortified camp, in the midst of a blizzard. Czar Peter, conversely, fled the field as the first blows were falling! The Russian army was utterly crushed, losing 9,000 dead and another 20,000 captured!

For the next 6 years, Charles turned his attentions on Poland/Saxony; chasing its king, Augustus the Strong (!), throughout his dominions till forcing his abdication in 1706  from the Polish throne and a termination of his alliance with Russia.

But these six years spent thrashing Augustus was a strategic mistake. It gave Peter and Russia time; to draw upon her vast manpower resources to rebuild and train an army capable of facing the much feared blue-coated Swedish veterans. When Charles launched his long-delayed invasion of Russia, he commanded the largest army Sweden would ever field in this war: 20,000 infantry and (reputedly) 29,000 cavalry (many of these were Polish light cavalry irregulars). However large this force was,  Mother Russia had supplied the Czar with much larger battalions. As Charles army marched through Poland toward the Russian border, 70,000 Russian troops were in the country, retreating and laying waste to the countryside before him. Several other Russian armies, none smaller than 40,000 men, were operating in the Baltic States and in the Ukraine, as well.

Charles managed to defeat the Russians in several small engagements as he advanced; and won his last victory over the Russians at the Battle of Holowczyn in July, 1708. But time and distance was working against him: Russia could always trade the one for the other; playing for time to replenish its “big battalions” by trading space, ever retreating into the depths of Russia. It was a problem both Napoleon and Hitler would wrestle with, no more successfully than Charles.

The vast spaces and a harsh winter depleted Charles’ army. In Spring of 1708, in need of allies, he marched into the Ukraine at the offer of alliance with the Zaporozhian Cossacks; in revolt against the Czar. But the Russians managed to crush the Cossack rebellion before Charles could arrive; and the Swedish King’s army faced a much larger Russian force at Poltava in June 1709.

Charles’ army of 14,000 men advanced against a well prepared Russian force, 45,000 strong in a well entrenched position; supported by nearly 100 guns. Charles, wounded in the foot a few days earlier, could take no part in the battle; and was forced to watch the battle from the rear in a litter. His bold Swedes pushed forward with great gallantry, capturing several of the Russian redoubts with bayonet. But the biggest battalions began to wear them down; and as the Swedish advance lost momentum, the Russian  went over to the offensive. The Swedes were cut down or forced to surrender; Charles himself being carried off the field to safety.

Genius and daring, ultimately, were no match for shear weight of numbers and resources. Charles had an opportunity after Narva to follow-up his victory and perhaps force Czar Peter to favorable terms. His sojourn in Poland had squandered that opportunity. The tiny Swedish lion was ultimately crushed by the enormous Russian mouse.

A LEAN AND HUNGRY SET OF WOLVES

The American Civil War is a classic example of scrappy banter weight verses a lumbering heavy weight. The Federal (Northern) forces had every advantage in manpower and material. But it took time to mobilize these advantages; and, as it turned out, even more time for President Abraham Lincoln to find a general with sufficient will and aggression to utilize these advantages fully. (Early in the war, General George B. McClellan was so cautious and reluctant to attack, despite the material superiority possessed by the Army of the Potomac over his Confederate opponent; that Lincoln caustically commented to his staff, “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”)

By contrast, the Army of Northern Virginia was over-flowing with fighting spirit; from its dirty, ill-clad enlisted men all the way up to its superbly confident and aggressive commanders. Such generals as Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, A.P. Hill, Jubal Early, James Longstreet, and of course its Commanding General, Robert E. Lee were among the best leadership teams ever gathered together under one command tent in American history. Outnumbered and outgunned by their Federal opponents, the Confederate forces relied on the one thing they had in abundance: courage and aggressive spirit.

Time and again, Jackson and Lee bested larger Northern armies. Jackson’s Valley Campaign and Lee’s Seven Days Battles are masterpieces of aggressive maneuver, and textbook examples of seizing the initiative; of keeping a larger, lumbering enemy constantly on his back foot, off balance and forced to react.

But Lee was perhaps keenly aware that the uneven struggle could not continue to go his way indefinitely. He needed to strike a knock-out blow before the Confederacy was worn down by its bigger opponent. He attempted twice to achieve this the only way it was possible: by carrying the war into the North and forcing Lincoln to sue for peace.

His first invasion of the North, in 1862, began promisingly with the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia advancing into Maryland on several convergent lines. Lee’s objectives were first the Union supply and communications hubs of Harrisburg and Baltimore (taking Harrisburg would have severed the man rail lines connecting the eastern and western United States, while capturing Baltimore would cut off Washington DC from the rest of the North); followed, ultimately, by isolating Washington, DC, and forcing the government to terms.

As Lee’s ragged Confederate battalions marched through Maryland, locals commented upon the soldier’s unkempt  appearance combined with their jaunty swagger. One Marylander noted:

They have no uniforms, but are all well armed and equipped, and have become so inured to hardships that they care but little for any of the comforts of civilization… They are the roughest looking set of creatures I ever saw…

Another described Lee’s confident veteran troops as “a lean and hungry set of wolves“!

An often bewildered McClellan’s was slow-to-react, despite the large numeric and material advantage enjoyed by his Army of the Potomac. Only a stroke of fate perhaps saved the Union from defeat in ’62.

A set of orders from Lee to his subordinates, outlining his plan of campaign and the dispositions of his divergent forces were accidentally dropped by a dispatch rider, concealed within a bunch cigars. These were discovered by Union soldiers and delivered to McClellan. Armed with his adversary’s plans, even so cautious a general as McClellan was moved to action!

In the resulting Battle of Antietam, Lee’s invasion was brought to a halt in the  bloodiest single day of fighting in American history. Backed by the bigger battalions, McClellan could afford the losses; Lee could not. His army was forced to withdraw back into the South.

The second invasion, in 1863, followed nearly the same line of approach and the same objectives. This time, the Army of Northern Virginia butted heads with the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania. The “high water mark” of the Confederacy, Lee’s “lean, hungry wolves” broke their teeth upon the Union defensive lines along the high ground, well supplied and supported by artillery.

Failing twice to win a knock-out, Lee spent the rest of the war on the defensive; attempting with varying degrees of success to slip the punches of his overwhelmingly bigger opponent; which, under the command of  U.S. Grant had found a commander unafraid to spend lives to achieve objectives. At last, forced into a corner with nothing more than a dreadful pounding to look forward to, the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox in 1865.

CONCLUSIONS

While history demonstrates examples of the smaller, more nimble army winning stunning victories against a larger and slower opponent; far more often war comes down to a bloody mathematical equation. As in professional football (American, not the other kind) bigger is nearly always better.

This is a lesson that American military and political leaders should bear in mind.

Our forces have, over the last two decades, been continually downsized; the large, “heavy” divisions demobilized in favor of smaller, more nimble combat brigades. The arguments for this seem persuasive: that we no longer face the prospect of armored conflict against the Soviets on the plains of Germany. That smaller forces, armed with more advanced and lethal equipment, are just as deadly as the older, larger formations with less lethal equipment; and far more deployable by air or sea.

In a short and sharp encounter with limited objectives, this argument holds water.

However, war is the province of uncertainty. Wars seldom turn out the way the planners originally envisioned them. If a short encounter bogs down into a bloody slugfest, even against an enemy with inferior or out-of-date equipment, and terrain does not favor rapid maneuver and numbers can translate into staying power; then a light “nimble” force can be cornered and pounded into submission by their more lumbering opponent.

Today we face potential enemies in China, North Korea, and Iran; possessed of large conventional forces and large reserves of manpower. Considering the nature and history of these regimes, we can surmise that they also possess a ruthless willingness to expend these reserves in order to achieve their objectives. While we, by contrast, are notoriously “casualty adverse” and continue to reduce the number of combat brigades we have available; making the loss of any one of these catastrophic.

At end of the civil war that brought him into power, Augustus Caesar downsized the Roman army from 78 legions to a “peace dividend” force of 25 legions. This force was tasked with defending an irregular and insecure border that extended from Egypt to the English Channel; from the Atlantic to the Euphrates River; around various independent kingdoms and tribal areas in the Balkans and Anatolia; and along the line of the Rhine River, facing the formidable Germans. Additionally, at various times and places Roman arms were called upon to enact punitive expeditions against or to expand the Empire into foreign lands.

The superiority of the Roman legions in battle was unquestioned. Roman training, equipment, organization, and leadership were all “force multipliers” that seemed to guarantee battlefield victory. This confidence underpinned Augustus’ cost saving measures of shrinking over-all force strength to a mere 28 legions.

In 9AD, three of these legions (led by a lawyer-turned-general, Quintilius Varus) were wiped out at the Teutoburger Wald, ambushed by the Germans. So distraught was the Emperor Augustus at this loss, that months later he is said to have banged his head against the wall, crying out:

“Quintili Vare, legiones redde!“ (‘Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!’)

Teutoberg Forest was not the worse military disaster suffered by Roman arms. The loss of 16-20 thousand troops, while a signal loss, was trivial when compared to such truly significant defeats such as Cannae; where Hannibal utterly destroyed a Roman army of 80,000. Or at Arausio, where an even greater number of soldiers were lost. After the former defeat, the Roman Senate had forbid public demonstrations of grief or despair; and simple raised another army as large the following year.

So what explains Augustus Caesar’s severe anxiety after Teutoberger Wald?

Simply that in Augustan Rome’s downsized, shrunken military structure those three legions represented nearly 17% of the entire legionary force. Unlike the Republic during the second Punic War, when the warlike Roman people could  generate legions of motivated and trained citizens by the tens of thousands; the Romans of the Augustan empire were now a nation of pampered and privileged civilians; protected by a small professional army of volunteers.

Sound familiar?

A small army of light, mobile brigades is ill-suited to a slugging match on the Korean peninsula, the deserts and mountains of Iran, or on the beaches or fields of Taiwan. We perhaps put too much faith in such “force multipliers” as technology, training, and information; and forget, at our peril, that God tends to favor the Big Battalions.

[1] Fair, Charles: From the Jaws of Victory, Ch. 5; Simon and Schuster 1971

MARRIED TO A WIENER: SHE KNEW WHAT SHE WAS GETTING INTO

Guest Editorial by Word Warrior Friend, Mark Sevigny; Orange County, CA

 

I think many unfair things have been said about Huma Abedin, wife of disgraced former Congressman and current Mayoral Candidate Anthony Wiener; and some allegations should be discarded as unproven at this time.

 
However, she is the archetype of the political animal frequently found to inhabit the
circles in which she travels and has deliberately inserted herself. An  intelligent, well-educated, and ambitious young woman, she hitched herself to a  promising young prince of the Democratic power structure – hoping to rise, as  her mentor (Hillary Clinton) did, to a position of power and influence – only to find out she had married an embarrassing self-indulgent, compulsive narcissist [I am being  polite] who is addicted to other things more despicable than political life and  power.

Now she is stuck in his tailspin to ignominy and oblivion. Instead of dealing with his repeated abuse of her trust and love with independent self-respect and resolve, she follows the cue of her mentor, sticks her head in the sand, thereby publicly humiliating herself and destroying anyone’s impression of her intelligence. All because, frankly, she doesn’t have the courage to admit she made a horrible mistake in marrying this bozo and she would have to forge a political career alone if she dumps him, which any
self-respecting wife would have done by this point.

The irony of this  situation is that 48 year old Wiener, having only a bachelors degree in
political science and having been employed in politics one way or the other most
of his life, is ill suited to almost any other pursuit, unless it would be as a  lobbyist. If he had done that, or slid into some patronage appointment, or staff  position he could have survived, made a comfortable living for himself, and  taken care of his family financially and otherwise for the rest of his life.
Instead, like drug addict fleeing his detox program, he re-asserted himself into the public spotlight, presenting himself as a reformed man, and asking the voters to give him one more chance in elected office. Then, it turns out, as he  must have known it would, that he is not reformed, but in fact is more addicted to the behavior which got him into trouble and disgrace in the first place…..And he still hopes the Democratic Party and voters of NYC will embrace him and forgive him – as his wife says she has.

Friend of Chuck Schumer or no, what planet does this guy live on?

Whatever planet it is, as long as he is in the public spotlight, he is taking his wife with him. She may believe it is impolitic and impolite to slit her husband’s throat in public, but he has to go to sleep sometime. I suspect, after a suitable mourning period for the death of Wiener’s latest political gambit, she will quietly divest herself of his worthless mangy carcass either officially [by divorce] or unofficially (by a pronounced separation); again in the mold of her mentor.

Perhaps Ms. Adebin should have known her marriage was doomed from the start when the interfaith marriage ceremony was “officiated” by that paragon of marital behavior: Bill Clinton.

The Signers of the Declaration of Independence: They Risked All For the Liberty We Enjoy

As we enjoy our 4^th of July celebrations, take a moment to reflect on those quaint men in powdered wigs men who gathered together back in Philadelphia in 1776.

We all have heard of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin; John Hancock and Samuel Adams (the only one to have a beer named after him).

But  have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the
Declaration of Independence?

Five signers were captured by the British in later battles, and became prisoners of war.
Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Richard Stockton of New Jersey had evacuated his family to New York, where one night he was dragged from his bed by local Tories and jailed at the infamous Provost Jail like a common criminal.

John Witherspoon, also of New Jersey, lost a son at the Battle of Germantown in October 1777.  Another, Abraham Clark, had two sons captured and imprisoned on a British prison barge.

Nine of the 56 served in the Continental Army and died during the course of the Revolutionary War.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept
from the seas by the British Navy. He was forced to sell his home and properties to pay his debts. He never recovered his fortune.

Thomas McKeam was “hunted” by the British “like a fox”; forced to move his
family almost constantly.  He served in the Congress without pay, and his
family was kept in hiding.

Soldiers looted the properties of Ellery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Rutledge, and Middleton. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates, there property appropriated for military use. John Hart was driven from his farm and forced to hid in forests and caves for a month. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed.  The enemy jailed his
wife on Long Island for several months, and though released her health continued to deteriorate. She died a few years later, never fully recovering from her ordeal.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson pointed out his own house to American gunners, suggesting that as it was the finest in the town, it no doubt had been taken and was being used by British General Cornwallis as his headquarters. He urged the Marquis de Lafayette  to open fire upon it. Several British officers dinning within were killed by the cannon fire.

The home of Thomas Nelson, Yorktown

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.  What kind of men were they?

Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists.  Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated.  But  they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were
not wild eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and
education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight,
and unwavering, they pledged: “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on
the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our
fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

They gave you and me a free and independent America.  The history books
tell about the battles of the Revolutionary War. But they don’t always tell the full story of these brave men who risked everything to stand up for liberty, against their own government; the most powerful empire in the world at that time.

Some of us take these liberties so much for granted…We shouldn’t.

So, take a couple of minutes while enjoying each and every 4th of July holiday, and
silently thank these patriots.  It’s not much to ask for the price they paid. And remember:

FREEDOM IS NEVER FREE!

Obama Bombs in Berlin: A Weak, Underwhelming Address From a Floundering President

By Nile Gardiner World Last updated:  June 20th, 2013

When John F. Kennedy delivered his “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech in front of the Schöneberg Rathaus on June 26, 1963, 450,000 people flocked to hear him. Fifty years later a far more subdued invitation-only crowd of 4,500 showed up to hear Barack Obama speak at the same location in Berlin.

As The National Journal noted, “he didn’t come away with much, winning just a smattering of applause from a crowd that was one-hundredth the size of JFK’s,” and far smaller than the 200,000 boisterous Germans who had listened to his 2008 address as a presidential candidate.

JFK had a clear message when he came to Berlin a half century ago – the free world must stand up to Communist tyranny. 24 years later, President Reagan stood in the same spot famously calling on the Soviets to “tear down this wall.” Reagan’s speech

was a seminal moment that ushered in the downfall of an evil empire, and gave hope to tens of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. It was a display of strength and conviction by the leader of the free world, sending an unequivocal message of solidarity with those who were fighting for freedom in the face of a monstrous totalitarian ideology.

In stark contrast to that of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama’s message on Wednesday was pure mush, another clichéd “citizens of the world” polemic with little substance. This was a speech big on platitudes and hopeless idealism, while containing much that was counter-productive for the world’s superpower. Ultimately it was little more than a laundry list of Obama’s favourite liberal pet causes, including cutting nuclear weapons, warning about climate change, putting an end to all wars, shutting Guantanamo, ending global poverty, and backing the European Project. It was a combination of staggering naiveté, the appeasement of America’s enemies and strategic adversaries, and the championing of more big government solutions.

There was little in this speech that advances US interests, or makes the world a safer place. Completely missing from Obama’s address was a call for the West to stand up to the rising threat of Islamist militancy, the defence of Christians facing huge levels of persecution and intimidation in the Middle East, strong condemnation of Iran and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and any criticism of growing authoritarianism in Russia. The president paid lip service to the NATO alliance, which has proved critical in preserving Europe’s security for over 60 years, but made no call for the alliance to be strengthened in the wake of waning support and investment in Europe.

President Obama’s words may well have pleased his German government hosts, content to see a United States whose ambitions as a military power have been significantly clipped since George W. Bush left office in 2009. But Barack Obama underscored again why he is no JFK or Ronald Reagan. In front of the Brandenburg Gate, Obama sounded more like the president of the European Commission than the leader of the free world. It is never a good sign when a US president parrots the language of a Brussels bureaucrat when he is supposed to be a champion of freedom. Obama’s distinctly unimpressive speech in Berlin was another dud from a floundering president whose leadership abroad is just as weak as it is at home.

GLOBAL WARMING: MAN-MADE OR NATURAL?

S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the
University of Virginia, a distinguished research professor at George Mason
University, and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.
He performed his undergraduate studies at Ohio State University and earned
his Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University. He was the founding dean of
the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences at the University of
Miami, the founding director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service,
and served for five years as vice chairman of the U.S. National Advisory
Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. Dr. Singer has written or edited over a
dozen books and mono-graphs, including, most recently, Unstoppable Global
Warming: Every 1,500 Years.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on the Hillsdale College
campus on June 30, 2007, during a seminar entitled “Economics and the
Environment, ” sponsored by the Charles R. and Kathleen K. Hoogland Center
for Teacher Excellence.

——————————————————————————————————————–

IN THE PAST few years there has been increasing concern about global climate
change on the part of the media, politicians, and the public. It has been
stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate
adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of
governments. Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human
activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way.
Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, warming and
cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of
human action. I would also argue that-should it occur-a modest warming would
be on the whole beneficial.

This is not to say that we don’t face a serious problem. But the problem is
political. Because of the mistaken idea that governments can and must do
something about climate, pressures are building that have the potential of
distorting energy policies in a way that will severely damage national
economies, decrease standards of living, and increase poverty. This
misdirection of resources will adversely affect human health and welfare in
industrialized nations, and even more in developing nations. Thus it could
well lead to increased social tensions within nations and conflict between
them.

If not for this economic and political damage, one might consider the
present concern about climate change nothing more than just another
environmentalist fad, like the Alar apple scare or the global cooling fears
of the 1970s. Given that so much is at stake, however, it is essential that
people better understand the issue.

MAN-MADE WARMING?

The most fundamental question is scientific: Is the observed warming of the
past 30 years due to natural causes or are human activities a main or even a
contributing factor?

At first glance, it is quite plausible that humans could be responsible for
warming the climate. After all, the burning of fossil fuels to generate
energy releases large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The
CO2 level has been increasing steadily since the beginning of the industrial
revolution and is now 35 percent higher than it was 200 years ago. Also, we
know from direct measurements that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” which strongly
absorbs infrared (heat) radiation. So the idea that burning fossil fuels
causes an enhanced “greenhouse effect” needs to be taken seriously.

But in seeking to understand recent warming, we also have to consider the
natural factors that have regularly warmed the climate prior to the
industrial revolution and, indeed, prior to any human presence on the earth.
After all, the geological record shows a persistent 1,500-year cycle of
warming and cooling extending back at least one million years.

In identifying the burning of fossil fuels as the chief cause of warming today, many politicians and environmental activists simply appeal to a so-called “scientific consensus.” There are two things wrong with this. First, there is no such consensus: An increasing number of climate scientists are raising serious questions about the political rush to judgment on this issue.

For example, the widely touted “consensus”; of 2,500  scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  (IPCC) is an illusion: Most of the panelists have no scientific  qualifications, and many of the others object to some part of the IPCC’s  report. The Associated Press reported recently that only 52 climate
scientists contributed to the report’s “Summary for Policymakers. ”

Likewise, only about a dozen members of the governing board voted on the
“consensus statement” on climate change by the American Meteorological
Society (AMS). Rank and file AMS scientists never had a say, which is why so
many of them are now openly rebelling. Estimates of skepticism within the AMS regarding man-made global warming are well over 50 percent.

The second reason not to rely on a “scientific consensus” in these matters
is that this is not how science works. After all, scientific advances
customarily come from a minority of scientists who challenge the majority
view-or even just a single person (think of Galileo or Einstein). Science
proceeds by the scientific method and draws conclusions based on evidence,
not on a show of hands.

But aren’t glaciers melting? Isn’t sea ice shrinking? Yes, but that’s not proof for human-caused warming. Any kind of warming, whether natural or human-caused, will melt ice. To assert that melting glaciers prove human causation is just bad logic.

What about the fact that carbon dioxide levels are increasing at the same time temperatures are rising? That’s an interesting correlation; but as every scientist knows, correlation is not causation. During much of the last century the climate was cooling while CO2 levels were rising. And we should note that the climate has not warmed in the past eight years, even though greenhouse gas levels have increased rapidly.

What about the fact-as cited by, among others, those who produced the IPCC
report-that every major greenhouse computer model (there are two dozen or
so) shows a large temperature increase due to human burning of fossil fuels?
Fortunately, there is a scientific way of testing these models to see whether current warming is due to a man-made greenhouse effect. It involves comparing the actual or observed pattern of warming with the warming pattern predicted by or calculated from the models. Essentially, we try to see if the “fingerprints” match;” fingerprints” meaning the rates of warming at different latitudes and altitudes.

For instance, theoretically, greenhouse warming in the tropics should register at increasingly high rates as one moves from the surface of the earth up into the atmosphere, peaking at about six miles above the earth’s surface. At that point, the level should be greater than at the surface by about a factor of three and quite pronounced, according to all the computer models. In reality, however, there is no increase at all. In fact, the data from bal-loon-borne radiosondes show the very opposite: a slight decrease in warming over the equator.

The fact that the observed and predicted patterns of warming don’t match
indicates that the man-made greenhouse contribution to current temperature
change is insignificant. This fact emerges from data and graphs collected in
the Climate Change Science Program Re-port 1.1, published by the federal
government in April 2006. It is  remarkable and puzzling that few have noticed this disparity between observed and predicted patterns of warming and drawn the obvious scientific conclusion.

What explains why greenhouse computer models predict temperature trends that
are so much larger than those observed?

The answer lies in the proper evaluation of feedback within the models. Remember that in addition to carbon dioxide, the real atmosphere contains water vapor, the most powerful greenhouse gas. Every one of the climate models calculates a significant
positive feedback from water vapor; i.e., a feedback that amplifies the warming effect of the CO2 increase by an average factor of two or three.

But it is quite possible that the water vapor feedback is negative rather than positive and thereby reduces the effect of increased CO2.

There are several ways this might occur. For example, when increased CO2 produces a warming of the ocean, a higher rate of evaporation might lead to more humidity and cloudiness (provided the atmosphere contains a sufficient number of cloud condensation nuclei). These low clouds reflect incoming solar radiation back into space and thereby cool the earth. Climate researchers have discovered other possible feedbacks and are busy evaluating which ones enhance and which diminish the effect of increasing CO2.

NATURAL CAUSES OF WARMING

A quite different question, but scientifically interesting, has to do with the natural factors influencing climate. This is a big topic about which much has been written. Natural factors include:

• continental drift and mountain-building
• changes in the Earth’s orbit
• volcanic eruptions
• solar variability

Different factors operate on different time scales. But on a time scale important for human experience-a scale of decades, let’s say-solar variability may be the most important.

Solar influence can manifest itself in different ways: fluctuations of solar irradiance (total energy), which has been measured in satellites and related to the sunspot cycle; variability of the ultraviolet portion of the solar spectrum, which in turn affects the amount of ozone in the stratosphere; and variations in the solar wind that modulate the intensity of cosmic rays (which, upon impact into the earth’s atmosphere, produce cloud condensation nuclei, affecting cloudiness and thus climate).

Scientists have been able to trace the impact of the sun on past climate using proxy data (since thermometers are relatively modern). A conventional proxy for temperature is the ratio of the heavy isotope of oxygen, Oxygen-18, to the most common form, Oxygen-16.

A paper published in Nature in 2001 describes the Oxygen-18 data (reflecting  temperature) from a stalagmite in a cave in Oman, covering a period of over 3,000 years. It also shows corresponding Carbon-14 data, which are directly related to the intensity of cosmic rays striking the earth’s atmosphere. One sees there a remarkably detailed correlation, almost on a year-by-year basis. While such research cannot establish the detailed mechanism of climate change, the causal connection is quite clear: Since the stalagmite temperature cannot affect the sun, it is the sun that affects climate.

POLICY CONSEQUENCES

If this line of reasoning is correct, human-caused increases in the CO2 level are quite insignificant to climate change. Natural causes of climate change, for their part, cannot be controlled by man. They are unstoppable.

Several policy consequences would follow from this simple fact:

•  Regulation of CO2 emissions is pointless and even counterproductive, in
  that no matter what kind of mitigation scheme is used, such regulation is
  hugely expensive.
• The development of non-fossil fuel energy sources, like ethanol and
  hydrogen, might be counterproductive, given that they have to be
  manufactured, often with the investment of great amounts of ordinary energy.
  Nor do they offer much reduction in oil imports.
•  Wind power and solar power become less attractive, being uneconomic and
  requiring huge subsidies. Substituting natural gas for coal in electricity generation makes less sense for the same reasons.

None of this is intended to argue against energy conservation. On the contrary, conserving energy reduces waste, saves money, and lowers energy prices-irrespective of what one may believe about global warming.

SCIENCE VS HYSTERIA

You will note that this has been a rational discussion. We asked the important question of whether there is appreciable man-made warming today. We presented evidence that indicates there is not, thereby suggesting that attempts by governments to control green-house- gas emissions are pointless and unwise.

Nevertheless, we have state governors calling for CO2 emissions limits on cars; we have city mayors calling for mandatory CO2 controls; we have the Supreme Court declaring CO2 a pollutant that may have to be regulated; we have every industrialized nation (with the exception of the U.S. and Australia) signed on to the Kyoto Protocol; and we have ongoing international demands for even more stringent controls when Kyoto expires in 2012.

What’s going on here?

To begin, perhaps even some of the advocates of these anti-warming policies are not so serious about them, as seen in a feature of the Kyoto Protocol called the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows a CO2 emitter (i.e., an energy user) to support a fanciful CO2 reduction scheme in developing nations in exchange for the right to keep on emitting CO2 un-abated. “Emission trading” among those countries that have ratified Kyoto allows for the sale of certificates of unused emission quotas. In many cases, the initial quota was simply given away by governments to power companies and other entities, which in turn collect a windfall fee from consumers. All of this has become
a huge financial racket that could someday make the UN’s “Oil for Food” scandal in Iraq seem minor by comparison. Even more fraudulent, these schemes do not reduce total CO2 emissions; not even in theory.

It is also worth noting that tens of thousands of interested persons benefit directly from the global warming scare-at the expense of the ordinary consumer. Environmental organizations globally, such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund have raked in billions of dollars. Multi-billion- dollar government subsidies for useless mitigation schemes are large and growing. Emission trading programs will soon reach the $100 billion a year level, with large fees paid to brokers and those who operate the scams. In other words, many people have discovered they can
benefit from climate scares and have formed an entrenched interest. Of course, there are also many sincere believers in an impending global warming catastrophe, spurred on in their fears by the growing number of one-sided books, movies, and media coverage.

The irony is that a slightly warmer climate with more carbon dioxide is in many ways beneficial rather than damaging. Economic studies have demonstrated that a modest warming and higher CO2 levels will increase GNP and raise standards of living, primarily by improving agriculture and forestry. It’s a well-known fact that CO2 is plant food and essential to the growth of crops and trees-and ultimately to the well-being of animals and humans.

You wouldn’t know it from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, but there are many upsides to global warming: Northern homes could save on heating fuel. Canadian farmers could harvest bumper crops. Greenland may become awash in cod and oil riches. Shippers could count on an Arctic shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. Forests may expand.

Mongolia could become an economic superpower. This is all speculative, even a little facetious. But still, might there be a silver lining for the frigid regions of Canada and Russia? “It’ s not that there won’t be bad things happening in those countries,” economics professor Robert O. Mendelsohn of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies says. “But the idea is that they will get such large gains, especially in agriculture, that they will be bigger than the losses.” Mendelsohn has looked at how gross domestic product around the world would be affected under different warming scenarios through 2100. Canada and Russia tend to come out as clear gainers, as does much of northern Europe and Mongolia, largely because of projected increases in agricultural production.

To repeat a point made at the beginning: Climate has been changing cyclically for at least a million years and has shown huge variations over geological time. Human beings have adapted well, and will continue to do so.

* * *

The nations of the world face many difficult problems. Many have societal problems like poverty, disease, lack of sanitation, and shortage of clean water. There are grave security problems arising from global terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Any of these problems are vastly more important than the imaginary problem of man-made global warming. It is a great shame that so many of our resources are being diverted from real problems to this non-problem. Perhaps in ten or 20 years this will become apparent to everyone, particularly if the climate should stop warming (as it
has for eight years now) or even begin to cool.

We can only trust that reason will prevail in the face of an onslaught of propaganda like Al Gore’s movie and despite the incessant misinformation generated by the media. Today, the imposed costs are still modest, and mostly hidden in taxes and in charges for electricity and motor fuels. If the scaremongers have their way, these costs will become enormous. But I believe that sound science and good sense will prevail in the face of irrational and scientifically baseless climate fears.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

CHIVALRY IS DEAD, LADIES: AND IT’S (PARTIALLY) YOUR FAULT!

As a paid-consultant on “masculinity” (yep, that’s right: hired by the Miller-Coors Brewing Company to help them reach-out to today’s masculine market) I consider myself something of an expert on men. I have, after all, been one most of my life. That aside, I have led what most would consider an enviably active and adventurous life; leading some of my friends to call me the “REAL most interesting man in the world” (forget that aging Latin lothario!). So it is with some degree of authority and an even greater degree of disgust that I say: I am sickened by my fellow men today.

As a man raised by a WWII veteran with a strong sense of chivalry (particularly toward women), I am disgusted with what passes today for manhood. So many men are mere shadows of what their gender represented in generations past. Military service members excepted (which include an amazing collection of very fine young men) most men today aren’t fit to carry the water of the “Greatest Generation”, my father’s generation; much less the dauntless knights who originally defined “chivalry”.

Where have all the Gary Coopers gone?

Now, I suspect, this has always been the case. Every generation laments the declining standards of the next. You just know that the very first cavemen sat around looking at their sons sitting around the fire; and complained, “Look at these wimps, cooking their meat with fire! We didn’t have fire! In our day we ate it RAW!”

But I digress.

My point is that men aren’t what they used to be. My father fought World War II; then got a Master’s Degree on the GI Bill while working nights and supporting a family. Me? If I have to balance my check book and go to the store on the same day, I need a nap!

But I was strongly reminded that by modern standards I am a veritable John Wayne compared to most men today; by what happen on 13 January 2012; when the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off the coast of Tuscany.

When this occurred we were treated to the sickening sight of men elbowing women and children aside in their frantic, rat-like scurry for the life-rafts. When the first of these life boats arrived on shore, aid workers were expecting to see them filled with women and children. Right? Instead, they saw lots of burly Tony Soprano-wannabes accompanied by their well-dressed wives and “goomahs”! Damned the women and children, it was every man for himself!

Think how things have changed in the 100 years since the Titanic catastrophe.

When RMS Titanic went down in the icy waters of the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, that ship’s women and children boarded the life rafts first; the crew strictly enforcing this custom. Captain Edward Smith was the last to leave the ship, and that after all lifeboats had been launched.

It is telling that although the First Class passengers comprised the very elite of 1912 “Society” (including some of the richest men in the world); more men from the First Class section chose to “go down with the ship” and die that night than did women of the underprivileged Third Class section (67% and 92% of First and Second Class men, respectively, died that night; as opposed to only 54% of Third Class women; and only 3% of women from the First Class section). Clearly, gender counted for more than wealth and privilege on that bitterly cold “Night to Remember”.

Captain Smith told his crew: “Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Now it’s every man for himself.” One witness recalled seeing him, probably washed overboard, clutching a child in the water as the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves. A member of the crew always believed it was Captain Smith’s voice he heard from the water after the Titanic was gone, urging him and others on: “Good boys! Good lads!”

How different that is from the Costa Concordia captain, Francesco Schettino, who along with other young brutes apparently launched himself and his Moldavian 25 year old bimbo into one of the lifeboats early on, elbowing women and children aside!

Today the cry of “women-and-children first”, has become “brutes andn bimbos” first!

Too many young men don’t respect women. They don’t seem to respect much of anything. I see it every day in the way men treat their ladies. Or any woman, or the old, the young, or the infirm: the only thing they hold in esteem seems to be what hangs between their own legs; and what they can do with it.

When I look at today’s young men I see a bunch of pierced, tattooed, slovenly louts. These are not men: they are “manlings”. Boys that never grow beyond their toys.

A beautiful 29 year old acquaintance of mine complains that her husband spends much of his time at work (in his parents Real Estate business) playing online poker. He then comes home, eats the dinner she has prepared for him, and then flops down on his Lazy Boy and plays X-Box most of the night! Never mind that his very sexy wife has needs of her own. When he is too tired to continue playing, he goes to bed and passes out.

Not a man: a manling.

But women must accept at least some of the blame for the current deplorable, degraded state of modern manhood.

Not to blame the victim here, but consider: Its women, after all, that raise men (all too often without a man in the house). It’s mostly young female teachers that teach our boys in their most formative years. And, ultimately, its women who accept and give themselves to “manlings”; rewarding thuggish, uncouth behavior by going out with and marrying such cretins.

Were women to choose wisely in their mates, picking the “nice guy” over the “bad boy”; then the old adage that “nice guys finish last” wouldn’t be so sadly true. Were women to demand that the men in their lives not treat them like slutty sex objects; but instead commit to them and family before mating, than many more boys would have involved fathers providing male role models in their lives.

Were mothers to raise boys to be gentleman with a sense of honor, they would grow up into men those mothers could be proud of.

Feminist politics, political correctness, and (most importantly) lack of male role models has left this generation of men with no clue how to behave as MEN!

When the ship is sinking and no one taking charge, wouldn’t it be nice if men were made of the same stern stuff the men aboard the Titanic were; when women and children really did come first, and men went down with the ship?

I will leave you with the immortal words of Rudyard Kipling, poet laureate of the British Empire; someone who knew more than a few “real men” in his life:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Richard Milhous Obama

 

(Reposted from Real Clear Politics)

By Carl  M. Cannon – May 20, 2013

He’s compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, evoked nostalgia for John F. Kennedy, sought to emulate Ronald Reagan, (belatedly) praised George W. Bush, and enlisted the assistance of Bill Clinton in his 2012 re-election effort, but as his second term stumbles along, the president with whom Barack Obama finds himself being compared is Richard M. Nixon.

My father, Lou Cannon, covered the White House with distinction for the Washington Post for many years, beginning in the Nixon administration. He employed an easy rule of thumb when fielding phone calls from anonymous tipsters:

If the caller said, “I have a story that will make Watergate look like a picnic,” Dad would hang up on him.

In the past week, Nixon’s name has been invoked often, and not in a way that pleases the current president or his loyalists. Unless it’s a reference to his dramatic 1972 visit to China, Nixon is not the president any of his successors enjoy being likened to — especially when the suffix “gate” is attached to it.

Barack Obama was only 13 years old when Nixon resigned from office one step ahead of the posse. This is old enough to know that correlations between himself and the 37th president should be contested, which Obama has done.

“I’ll let you guys engage in those comparisons,” he replied when asked at a rainy Rose Garden appearance Thursday how he felt about the Nixon parallel. “You can go ahead and read the history, I think, and draw your own conclusions.”

This response echoed language employed earlier in the week by Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney. “I can tell you,” the White House press secretary told reporters, “that the people who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history.”

Fair enough. Carney was a colleague of mine in the White House press corps during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush years, and he summoned a pretty good institutional memory about the beat. Nixon’s presidency unraveled on the shoals of widespread criminality with no precedent in American politics. So, yes — by all means, let’s leave Watergate out of it.

Yet, I can’t help but think that Nixon and Obama have more in common than either man’s devotees might imagine.

Richard Milhous Nixon was thin-skinned, felt persecuted by the opposition party, had a penchant for classifying political adversaries — and journalists — as “enemies,” and tried to control his image so fiercely that, ultimately, zealous aides committed illegal acts to further his re-election.

But even before that had happened — and before Nixon himself began directing a coverup — truth had become a casualty of his administration. This is the parallel between Richard Nixon and Barack Obama.

No evidence has been unearthed connecting Obama, or anyone under his direction, to illicit activities. But the absence of criminality isn’t the only test here. Nixon’s “enemies,” at least in his mind, also included vast swaths of the Fourth Estate. That apparently is how the current president operates, too.

Barack Obama often displays contempt for the proper role of news-gatherers and, by extension, for the value of reporting that seeks to be unbiased. Often, officials in his White House or re-election campaign seem uncomprehending of the concept of straight reporting.

In their Manichean world, there are liberal news organizations (good) and conservative outlets (bad). Some of the news business does work this way — more than when Nixon was president, for sure — but what Obama and his political advisers and White House press handlers have done is graft their own hyper-partisanship onto the media.

In the Obama administration, it’s not uncommon for a White House press official to scream profanely over the phone at journalists whose stories they dislike, plant questions from friendly media outlets, and deny access to briefings to reporters who ask tough questions. This administration has aggressively used the Justice Department to ferret out news leaks, declared open season on a media organization out of sync with his philosophy (Fox News), and routinely questioned the professionalism of reporters and the patriotism of the opposition political party. That disquieting sound you hear is an echo from the Nixon years.

And though the current administration’s evasions about last September’s attacks in Benghazi, the partisan 2010-2012 activities by IRS, and the unprecedented scope of the Justice Department’s snooping into Associated Press phone records are all unrelated controversies, there is a common thread.

Those who work for this president have a fetish for stage managing the news. They never simply trust the facts; or maybe a better way of saying it is that they don’t trust the American people to be able to handle the facts. Washington has been consumed in recent weeks about who, exactly, massaged the administration’s “talking points” on Benghazi.

The underlying problem is that there were talking points at all. The phrase was popularized in the 1970s in the State Department. Originally the practice ensured that government officials were employing the precise, but opaque, language required in the field of international diplomacy. But the phrase soon migrated to politics, where it meant something quite different: Talking points were the lines of the day to be employed in interviews by partisan political operatives either to defend their position or attack the other side.

Benghazi represents the merging of two uses of the term. Four government officials were killed and a U.S. facility was attacked. Yes, some Republicans wanted to use that for partisan gain, but most Americans simply wanted to know what happened, and why. They still have not been told.

All politics is local, famed Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill is known for saying. Under Obama, all foreign affairs is domestic politics.

Concerning the IRS scandal, there is no evidence that Obama unleashed tax collectors on opponents, as Nixon did. But after years of comparing congressional Republicans to terrorists and hostage-takers, and characterizing the Tea Party as racists and extremists, what message did the president or the leaders of his party think they were sending IRS managers?

Obama is never content to simply say he thinks he can show how wrong-headed Republicans are about the federal budget. No, he says they should put “country ahead of party,” thereby suggesting they are deliberately hurting the economy to hurt him.

This, too, is Nixonland.

On June 29, 1972, Nixon was talking to Henry Kissinger in a taped conversation about the Democratic Party platform. “These people are so revolting that they have to be smashed,” Nixon tells his national security adviser.

“I don’t mean just beat them,” Nixon adds. “It’s good to beat them. But I mean smashed. They must be, they must be, disgraced, driven right out of public life.”

No tapes are available to know how Obama speaks about Republicans in private. But tonally, he’s not that much different from Nixon when speaking in public. Last week, even after the Benghazi, IRS, and AP controversies crested on the White House steps, Obama found time to blame Republicans at a New York fundraiser.

“What’s blocking us right now is a sort of hyper-partisanship in Washington that I was, frankly, hoping to overcome in 2008,” the president said. “My thinking was when we beat them in 2012, that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet. But I am persistent. And I am staying at it. … If there are folks who are more interested in winning elections than they are thinking about the next generation, then I want to make sure there are consequences to that.”

Get all that? The Republicans don’t merely have a difference of opinion with the president. They are rabid, and craven, and willing to sacrifice their own children’s futures to win elections. This Nixon-esque attitude constitutes a toxic brew: whining, boasting, and name-calling all overlaid with persecution-complex and a profound contempt for his opponents — along with a determination to make them pay.

Like Nixon, Obama also fancies himself a press critic. Although the man received press coverage in 2008 and 2012 that Nixon would have killed for, there are considerable irritants out there, including radioman Rush Limbaugh, but primarily Fox News, which Obama and his aides have attempted to delegitimize by name.

In so doing, Obama has actually gone places in public Nixon only dared go in private.

As I write this piece, I am looking at a memo written on July 30, 1972, by President Nixon to White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman. That morning, The Washington Post had published a story by Lou Cannon headlined “Nixon Running Scared.”

That article apparently got under Nixon’s skin. His memo to Haldeman runs for three pages. His premise is that the Washington Post “is totally against us.” Making no allowance for the possibility of objective reporting, Nixon starts by telling his top adviser that he understands campaign aides must deal with “media representatives that we know are antagonistic to us.”

Nixon’s second point is that they should not “waste time” with such outlets at the expense of “turning down interviews with media representatives who are our friends.” This seems to be to a false choice, but Nixon — who would win re-election in 1972 in a landslide — is just warming to his main point:

“Third, even when our most intelligent people are meeting with people like Cannon they must constantly keep in mind that they are confronting a political enemy and that everything they say will, therefore, be used against us.”

We don’t know if Obama or his minions also keep enemies lists, if only in their heads. But we do know that they view the media with the same with-us-or-against-us mentality that Nixon fostered. And though that attitude can help win elections, it surely impedes good governance.

Richard Nixon thought liberals were out to get him. Guess what? Many of them were. Likewise, Barack Obama thinks the Republicans want him to fail in office. Many of them do. But it’s a poor excuse for bad behavior.

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington Editor for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.

NEWSWEEK PREDICTS CLIMATE CATASTROPHE

Newsweek, April 28

Bureau Reporter Peter Gwynne    

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

—PETER GWYNNE with bureau reports

NOTE FROM WORDWARRIOR:

This story actually ran in Newsweek onApril 28, 1975 !!  

Of course none of the predictions of massive food shortages and global famine came to pass. What famine there has been in the last 50 years has largely been the product of civil war caused food dislocation, or governments starving their own (often rebellious) people.