Category Archives: defense policy

Oh, Yes It Is

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The Wall Street Journal titled one of its Wednesday editorials about Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat governor and putative Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Vice President Tim Walz with this amazingly ignorant subheadline:

His military record isn’t a good reason to oppose his candidacy.

The editors’ rationalization:

Before his political career, Mr Walz rose to the highest enlisted rank of Command Sergeant Major. He retired in May 2005, shortly before the unit was notified in July 2005 that it would be deployed to Iraq. Fox News reports that the Pentagon says Mr Walz put in his retirement request several months earlier, though it’s fair to ask if he was aware of the possible Iraq deployment.
His retirement timing wasn’t ideal, leaving his leadership position when his unit was headed into a war zone.

After all, the editors nattered,

But if he had been deemed essential to the operation, the Guard could have declined to approve it.

Yes, Walz was well aware of his unit’s pending deployment to an active combat zone; it was under a Warning Order to prepare for that deployment when Walz put in his “retirement” papers. Walz’ timing “wasn’t ideal” for his unit, but it was well-timed to get him out of serving a dangerous assignment.

Associated with Walz’ abandonment of his unit, he had signed up and begun taking courses for a promotion to Command Sergeant Major. He was provisionally promoted to that rank on his commitment to the course. Taking the course also carried with it a commitment to serve for two more years at that rank and in a position commensurate with that rank. Failure to honor the commitment, or to complete the course, carried with it a consequence that he would be demoted/returned to his lower rank of Master Sergeant—which Walz also knew; he had to sign paperwork acknowledging that.

Walz quit his unit while it was under orders to prepare for a combat zone deployment; he was reduced in rank, and he was allowed to retire. Yet his Web page still claims he was a Command Sergeant Major when he retired. That’s a straight-up lie. When he put in his papers, reneging on that two-year commitment, he was reduced in rank to his prior, permanent rank of Master Sergeant. His service as a Command Sergeant Major was only provisional, and contingent on his honoring his commitment. The editors disingenuously claim there’s no doubt he had reached the higher position while active. No: he achieved that rank only provisionally, lost it on his reneging on his commitment, and was discharged at the lower, permanent rank.

Walz has also been lying about his having served “in war.” That may have been a deceptive boast, though a minor one, scribbled the editors. The closest Walz came to serving “in war” was during our fighting in Afghanistan—he had a six-month tour 2,500 miles behind the lines in the comfortable offices of the base in Italy to which he’d been assigned. Again, no: a lie of that magnitude is no mere minor deceptive boast—it’s a despicable lie that cheapens and insults the service of so many who have actually served in war and especially those who’ve been wounded, maimed, mentally scarred during that service.

Then there’s that editorial foolishness that the Guard could have retained him had he been essential. Men whose lives are on the line deserve a leader who’s committed to them and to the mission to which their unit—and supposedly Walz—are assigned. The Guard correctly assessed Walz’ lack of commitment to his duties, correctly recognized that Walz considered his personal political career more important than the lives of the men and women whom he would be been leading in a combat zone. The Guard was correct to release this…NCO…who would have been worse than merely a Beetle Bailey with senior sergeant chevrons. Beetle Bailey at least was an honest shirker, come to that.

The United States deserves a Vice President who is committed to us citizens and who has the courage and morality to keep that commitment when things get tough, whether for our nation or for the Vice President personally. That’s not who Walz is.

Begging Iran

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The subheadline tells the tale:

Biden administration mounts last-ditch appeal to Tehran, while also pushing to keep cease-fire talks alive

And this from Secretary of State Antony Blinken:

We are engaged in intense diplomacy pretty much around the clock with a very simple message: all parties must refrain from escalation. It’s also critical that we break this cycle by reaching a cease-fire in Gaza.

And this from a carefully unidentified US official:

We’re preparing to defend Israel in an April-like manner[.]

This timidity by our government is only leading to continued deaths of Israeli citizens at the hands of Iran and its terrorist surrogates, and the continued deaths of those Palestinians about whom the Biden-Harris administration pretends so shrilly to be worried, as Iran’s terrorist surrogate Hamas continues to hold Palestinians as shields.

Equating Israel’s struggle to defend itself in a war for its survival against its terrorist attackers with those terrorist attackers is disgustingly, deeply immoral. Defending Israel in an April-like manner, wherein American forces, along with Jordanian and British forces, shot down an important number of the 300+ missiles, rockets, and cruise missiles Iran fired at Israel that April, was sufficiently inadequate that Israel finds itself in a similar strait today.

Purely defensive efforts are wholly inadequate.  Without further second-guessing the Biden-Harris effort last April, what will be necessary today are Rules Two and Three. The US must destroy Hezbollah and Houthi launching facilities, whether or not they’re preparing to launch, along with those terrorists’ missile and rocket storage sites and their ammunition and fuel dumps. The US must go further: our forces must sink the Iranian navy afloat and destroy Iran’s air defense sites and its launch facilities and associated missile and rocket storage sites.

That will leave Israel free to deal with the close-in threats: those rockets, missiles, and cruise missiles that do get through to range of Israel’s defenses, and to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist forces.

In the meantime, though, Hezbollah is firing rockets into northern Israel, killing tens of Israeli men, women, and children, all with no response from the US.

Israel is a critical ally of ours. Either we are a critical ally of Israel, or we are not. The Biden-Harris administration’s activities are not encouraging.

Here’s a Thought

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I do get them on occasion.  The Five Eyes Alliance, consisting of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have issued a report delineating the utter dependence of those nations (and the Western world at large, I add) on the People’s Republic of China for supplies of rare earth elements, elements that are Critical Items in producing a nation’s modern weapons and that are Critic Items in national economies dependent on computers, communications, and infrastructure distribution nodes. That report, DECREASING RARE EARTHS DEPENDENCY: HOW THE FIVE EYES ALLIANCE CAN MINIMISE RARE EARTHS TRADING RISK WITH CHINA (all caps in the original) can be read here.

The report recommended diversify[ing] away from China for the importing of rare earth elements (REEs). The authors proposed this be achieved through “two key policies:”

  • broadening the scope of the Five Eyes Alliance to include increased trade and cooperation on REEs and REEs-dependent goods and services
  • actively seeking alternative sources, whether through new import sources or substitutes for REEs

My thought concerns that last. The Five Eyes, along with the nations rimming the South China Sea, particularly Viet Nam, the Philippines, and the Republic of China, also along with the Republic of Korea and Japan—all of which are even more dependent on rare earth acquisition—should begin actively mining the South China Sea floor, which is rich with rare earth nodules just lying around on the surface of the floor. In support of those mining operations, the Five Eyes’ navies should be prepared to sink PLAN shipping that attempts to interfere with this mining of the sea floor underlying these international waters. If those additional interested nations choose not to participate, the Five Eyes should proceed anyway.

That might seem more confrontational than heretofore, but that’s what we need instead of backpedaling all the time or constantly seeking to accommodate the PRC.

White House Hatred of Israel

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That’s what this Wall Street Journal editors’ lede implies, if the claim is true.

Is US foreign policy on autopilot? On Wednesday we learned the Biden Administration is imposing sanctions on another Israeli while reissuing a sanctions waiver that lets Iran access more than $10 billion in frozen funds. Its priorities reflect a policy that long ago was overtaken by events.

That’s not autopilot. That’s the Biden White House continuing those folks’ long-standing disdain, extending to open hatred, of all things Israeli. Why do they think that way? The position is so irrational—Israel is our only real ally in the Middle East; it’s the only democracy there; the nation is inclusive enough to include Arab citizens and Arab Knesset members; the nation bends over backwards, even today, to avoid civilian casualties in a war inflicted by a terrorist entity for which civilian casualties, even of their own brethren, are the goal—that only those White House persons can answer the question. If they think about it at all.

The editors concluded their piece with this:

[W]e got Iran-backed war and assaults on US forces and commercial shipping. What will it take for Mr Biden and his advisers to recognize their failure and change course?

Maybe Biden, et al., don’t see a need for course correction. Maybe they don’t think their pro-Iran, anti-Israel moves are failures.

What’s at least as bad is the silence from the Progressive-Democratic Party regarding Biden’s moves vis-à-vis Iran and Israel. That the syndicate is so carefully silent suggests its own complicity in this irrational hatred.

But They are the Same Theater

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A letter writer in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section expressed his concern for NATO’s increasing emphasis on the People’s Republic of China threat in the Pacific, saying in part,

NATO, however, shouldn’t be pushing into Asia or treating Europe and Asia as the same theater.

And

…founding charter: to maintain the peace in the North Atlantic and defend its member states from a Russian attack.

Asia, the Pacific theater, dominated as it is by the enemy nation, the People’s Republic of China, and the European theater that’s formally the DOC of NATO are, in fact the same theater; the two regions are adjacent Areas of Responsibility.

This isn’t a matter of who’s got the intercontinental reach of missiles. It’s the closely intertwined—and dependency creating—trade regimes and economies, as the PRC exports at artificially lowered price its goods into Europe; the PRC engages in active cyber espionage and cyber sabotage activities; the PRC engages in active dis- and misinformation, pushing as it does its state-owned and -run social media facilities like TikTok and ecommerce facilities like TEMU, one of which actively pushes false claims (not information) and both of which actively hoover up individualized personal and business information for the use of the PRC’s intelligence community; the PRC’s PLA moves into the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic Oceans and into the northeastern Mediterranean Sea with its dual use commercial and military seaports and airports; and on and on.

Maintaining the peace in the North Atlantic, thus, requires the PRC threat to that theater be addressed. Furthermore, the PRC’s nakedly open support of Russia in the latter’s equally naked invasion of a sovereign nation makes it imperative that “defending…from a Russian attack” involve addressing the PRC threat. That’s optimally done at the source; hence the need to emphasize the threat to NATO interests and security by including Asia as one of the AORs in the NATO theater of operations.

Distance in the modern world is nonexistent. It’s entirely appropriate that NATO expand its area of regard and learn to do two things at once.