Category Archives: defense policy

In Which I Disagree

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There is a bipartisan bill afoot that would cut all taxpayer-based funding for any gain-of-function research into any virus or bacterium for at least next five years.

I disagree.

As the Wuhan Virus, which the People’s Republic of China government released onto the world (whether by design or by incompetent lab carelessness) demonstrates, we need, desperately, to understand such plussed up biologics, whether they’ve been…enhanced…for politico-military use, as our enemies are surely researching, or they’ve naturally jumped from their animal origins to human infectiousness.

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Did He Do It?

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Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley stands accused by the journalists Bob Woodward and his co-author Robert Costa of having made apparently treasonous calls to his counterpart in the People’s Republic of China government to assure them that an attack was not imminent and promising to give them a heads up if the US were about to attack.

He’s also accused by these journalists of having illegally inserted himself into the chain of command, instructing the generals involved to not act on the Commander-in-Chief’s (i.e., the President of the United States) order to launch our nuclear weapons under any circumstance without first involving him, Milley, in the decision.

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Failure

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A letter writer, in his 10 Sept Wall Street Journal Letter, quoted from former President George Bush the Younger’s Decision Points (scroll to the last letter).

Ultimately, the only way the Taliban and al Qaeda can retake Afghanistan is if America abandons the country. Allowing the extremists to reclaim power would force Afghan women back into subservience, remove girls from school, and betray all the gains of the past nine years. After the Cold War, the United States gave up on Afghanistan. The result was chaos, civil war, the Taliban takeover, sanctuary for al Qaeda, and the nightmare of 9/11. To forget that lesson would be a dreadful mistake.

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It’s a Start

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In acknowledgment of the fiasco associated with 2020’s voting machine accessibility from/to the Internet, the Election Assistance Commission, an independent Federal Government facility (and unaffiliated with the Federal Election Commission), has moved to bar any connection with the Internet by a voting machine.

Going forward, vote systems cannot be connected to any digital networks, and wireless technology must be disabled too.

And

The new requirements provide a much more draconian ban on external access to the Internet or other computer networks, a security provision otherwise known as an “air gap.” The commission specifically cited the potential threat posed by foreign adversaries to meddle in elections.

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And We Thought Obama Was Bad

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…with his penchant for finger-wagging in lieu of concrete action.

Here are the Houthis, demonstrating their utter contempt for the Biden-Harris administration and its diplomatic mouthpiece, SecState Antony Blinken (D).

First, President Joe Biden (D) cut off arms sales to the Saudis, hoping the Houthis would appreciate the gesture and play nice. The Houthis’ nice play was a drone attack on a Saudi civilian airport that wounded eight and damaged a commercial aircraft.  Blinken

“strongly” condemned the attack, adding that “we again call on the Houthis to uphold a ceasefire and engage in negotiations under UN auspices.”

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What Biden’s Afghan Job Well Done Looks Like

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Ambassador Kelley Eckels Currie, former US ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues:

Currie’s group organized buses to take roughly 700 Afghans, women and their families, to the [Kabul] airport, maintaining communications with the State Department, vetting the evacuees in advance and sharing passenger lists for the buses.
“The State Department was aware of the groups we were trying to assist,” Currie said. “I was told that this information had been raised at the highest levels; we had very senior people reaching out to State leadership.”
That included at least one message sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, she said. And she personally wrote a note to Undersecretary of State for Management Ambassador John Bass.
Authorities told the group to wait in a staging facility for 24 hours before the State Department reversed course and said it couldn’t help fly them out.

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Escalating

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First (well, almost first, but the early large), President Joe Biden (D) surrendered in Afghanistan, and he did it so abjectly that he abandoned Americans (he was correct when he said through his Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, that he wasn’t merely “stranding” them), allies’ citizens, and Afghan partners in his desperation to meet the terrorist Taliban’s deadline.

Then Baby Kim has resumed northern Korea’s weapons grade plutonium-producing nuclear reactor—and not even troubling to conceal that effort.

Now this.

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Maybe It’s Time

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Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston had this on the importance of “diversity and inclusion” relative to combat capability:

Diversity is a number—do you have people that don’t look or think like you in the room? Inclusion is listening and valuing those people[.]

Our army’s Training and Doctrine Command, via its official twitter account had this:

Inclusion & Diversity is what makes our [U.S. Army] better.

No. What makes our army—our military establishment in general—is whether we have soldiers and formations of soldiers who are capable, in defense of our nation and when called of our friends and allies, of successfully engaging, pursuing, and killing our enemies’ soldiers, our enemies’ formations, our enemies’ capability of mounting further attacks.

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Is Biden at it Again?

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Is this another dangerous failure of the Biden/Harris administration?

US officials have approved license applications worth hundreds of millions of dollars for China’s blacklisted telecom company Huawei to buy chips for its growing auto component business, two people familiar with the matter said.

Apparently, it’s been going on behind our backs since shortly after Biden took office.

But in recent weeks and months, people familiar with the application process told Reuters the US has granted licenses authorizing suppliers to sell chips to Huawei for such vehicle components as video screens and sensors.

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Some Words from our Vice President

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Vice President Kamala Harris (D) said these things on her gallivant through Southeast Asia.

We know that Beijing continues to coerce, to intimidate and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea. Beijing’s actions continue to undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations.

And

It is in our vital interest to stand united with our allies and our partners in Southeast Asia in defense of a free and open Indo-Pacific[.]

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