My, Oh My...

...oh my.

Sustaining Faith

At Politics Central, Richard Fernandez, more widely know as Wretchard of The Belmont Club, warns those in the West who would still look for courage in the face “the horde of Basiji:”

What Deity, race or tribe might we still raise against the horde of Basiji?

My own guess is that neither Israel nor the West at large can long resist radical Islam without some sustaining faith of its own, a faith it will not find unless it makes up its mind to look for it. Men will fight on for as long as there is something left to fight for and not otherwise. Despair comes when we are finally convinced that even our hopes are futile. Winston Smith’s final question in 1984’s Room 101 after having despaired of the existence of God was to ask after the possibility of freedom: the existence of the Brotherhood, the only resistance to Big Brother.

(Winston)”Does the Brotherhood exist?”

(O’Brien) “That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be an unsolved riddle in your mind.”

That is the weakness of reason, Winston Smith’s weakness: to stop when there is no reason to continue. And that is the power of faith: to go on without the answers, but to go on.

A steely determination surely fortified that faith of the Basij that allowed Iran’s current President to drape the necks of children with dollar store trinkets, and march them off into minefields. Can we match our enemies in resolve, if not in sheer brutality?

We look into the face of pure evil, as we have before. What will we see this time? Where will be our resolve? From whence will come our hope of deliverance?

It will always be extremely hard to argue with those gentler souls among us, who would never rise to the challenge of the oppressor, or tyrant, or murderer. We can appreciate their natural reluctance in the face of threat. But we must not tolerate their interference in those actions necessitated to ensure our very survival.

I heard a couple of stories recently from a couple of our veterans. A Marine sniper, undergoing treatment for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) describes having to take down a woman with an AK47 engaging his fellow Marines. Snipers, I am told, are taught not to look their targets in the eyes. He didn’t, but he couldn’t shoot between them, either. A well-aimed shot at one arm, hoping she would stay down, drop the weapon. She didn’t. A shot in the other arm, and then a leg, same reaction both times, up and threatening. Only then did the Marine place one in what he knows should have been his initial target, and she was taken out. All the while working against what he felt inside, “no women or children.”

Another Marine remembers the boy coming at them with a grenade. He knows the boy may have been forced, to protect his family, or promised some eternal reward, or even temporal approval or encouragement. Slam dunk, ROE-wise, and poof, he’s blown away.

They both have nightmares where loved ones take the place of the terminus of their torment. Another observes, “When you were in the fight, you did what you had to do, you saw it as a soldier, it was alright. Now, you remember it as a husband, a father, a civilian, and you war within yourself, against what you ‘know’ is right.”

The men and women of our military are among the finest our Nation can produce. They go to war, “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,” to quote Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.

With such resolve, many have faced the threat. We have seen the carnage from many hard and brutal fights, not all of them, unfortunately, political. Some have seen first hand the worst havoc that humanity can wreak.

Every man and woman in the fight must find their own sources for inner and outer strength. We need as a society to come alongside, nurture, sustain, encourage, and comfort them in their afflictions on our behalf.

But we need to do something more, as well. We need to find that sustaining faith in our own foundations, our principles, and the bedrock faith in the great experiment in Democracy that is America, and take a stand. That the civilization we lead, the values and principles our very existence embodies, is worth whatever price, whatever cost, whatever sorrow there may be in fighting against those who would destroy us.

(Via Instapundit, Cross-posted at Dadmanly)

A new school with a cool name.

Paul R. Smith Middle School, Holiday, Florida.

HOLIDAY, Fla.(Army News Service, Aug. 29, 2006) – What began last year as a suggestion by retired Maj. Gen. Fred Raymond came full circle last Friday during a dedication ceremony of the new Paul R. Smith Middle School in Holiday, Fla.

More than 500 family, friends, Soldiers, veterans, legislators, county officials and students were present.

Good. Whether or not you understand why I say that right now - Read the whole thing here and you will understand.

Good.

If you're still confused... which I doubt, but I wanna link it anyway - Damn Good.

Someone take away Ralph's crayons

Has anyone started a war by drawing a map? Ralph Peters gives the Mid-East a Churchill....but if I was him I would be careful going on travel anytime soon. Kind of like briefing a bunch of Saudi officers about a training exercise in the Persian Gulf.......

On the Jordanian Border

Over at OPFOR, Major P shares a personal note from a fellow Marine officer currently on the Jordanian border, sharing some experiences with Iraqis there. It's an excellent read that you should make time for today. (Thanks for sharing, Major P.)

One of the few things I am confident of is that none of them see any correlation between what they’re doing (or allowing someone else to do) and the problems their country faces. I did my best to walk them through it step by step – You have to get water from the shepherds because your government can’t get you water… It can’t get it to you because it can’t afford to fix the water trucks it owns (and that you’ve broken) or dig wells...It’s the same reason they can’t get you food or gas for your patrol vehicles on anything approaching a regular basis…They can’t afford it because, 1) they have to spend a fortune cleaning up the messes the “dangerous criminals” (insurgents) keep making and 2) they have no income because the people that should be collecting taxes and customs duties – not to mention the people who are supposed to make sure things actually go through the proper ports of entry instead of across the border – aren’t doing their jobs. I got mostly blank stares, at least from those who hadn’t already gone back to watching Egyptian music videos on TV.

The calm before the, um, aid stampede.

One fine January day in 2005, I was in the village of Mohammed Omarkhel, Kapisa Province, Afghanistan. We were dropping off some humanitarian assistance, using the local school staff to distribute it to the local populace. I was quite pleased with myself while taking the short clip. Two minutes after turning the camera off, we got bum-rushed by a whole crowd of people wanting to get theirs. My interpreter, the dapper gentleman you see in the video had to employ his formidable judo abilities to, uh, retrieve an NCO from a pile of people. I was busy using my rugby skills to tackle young men off the truck as they tried to make off with the contents. Took a few minutes (and a few swats with sticks by the school staff too) to get things under control. No injuries, but it was startling. I kept the clip to use as an example of how not to become complacent on an HA mission, heh heh. Watch my incorrect conclusion HERE.

Re: USS Wahoo Found?

In addition to USS Wahoo probably being found by the Russians, USS Grunion (SS 216) was likely found off Adak by a team led by the last CO's children last week as well. I discussed both of them over at my home submarine blog last week.

And while the boats won't be disturbed to retrieve them, I'd venture to say that LCDR Dudley "Mush" Morton's dolphins aboard the Wahoo would probably the most sacred "holy relic" the Submarine Force has. He taught submariners how to fight.

Bias in the media.... a simple example of how viewpoint...

...affects outlook.

Yesterday at Castle Argghhh!, I pointed to a NYT article which features a former colleague of mine, BG Dana Pittard, which pretty much focused only on the negatives from the video press conference.

Today, I have up the Armed Forces Press Service press release covering the same conference. Both articles start with and cover the negative story - the refusal of Iraqi soldiers to deploy from their home region to Baghdad. But after that, they diverge greatly.

Come on over, take a look - and see which one you think actually provides more information to the reader. Castle Argghhh!, we post, you decide. Unless I'm feeling dictatorial.

USS Wahoo found?

I can't believe I beat Eagle1 or the Bubblehead Brotherhood to this one...

For those of you with a historical bent... they may have found the USS Wahoo.

[I guess I shoulda said... "In this space" since I seemed to have tweaked Chap's nose a bit... he didn't even leave comments open so I could genuflect properly!]

USS Shiloh (CG-67) deploys to Japan with some fanfare

Aegis cruiser arrives in Japan as noted here.

Best CENTCOM slide of the week

With all the talk around success; in a macro sense the key is letting Iraq be run by Iraqis. This slide from CENTCOM last week tells the story better than 1,000 words. Methinks.