Monthly Archives: February 2015

Why?

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…is this man still on the payroll?

Robert McDonald, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, wrongly claimed in a videotaped comment earlier this year that he served in the Army’s elite special forces, when his military service of five years was in fact spent almost entirely with the 82nd Airborne Division during the late 1970s.

Haven’t had done, yet, with these problems of stolen valor, now that it’s reaching into the upper echelons of our Federal government?

US special operations forces (SOF) are composed of exhaustively trained and highly capable troops from each military service, including the Army Rangers, Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and Army Special Forces (also known as the Green Berets)—but not the 82nd Airborne. They [SOF] are certified to undertake the most dangerous and delicate missions….

To be sure, after having been found out, McDonald has issued an apology for his lie:

While I was in Los Angeles, engaging a homeless individual to determine his Veteran status, I asked the man where he had served in the military. He responded that he had served in special forces. I incorrectly stated that I had been in special forces. That was inaccurate and I apologize to anyone that was offended by my misstatement.

This was no little white lie, though, nor a politician’s…exaggeration for effect. On something of this magnitude, I get a little stiff-necked, and I ask: if McDonald had any integrity, he never would have made the claim in the first place; how, then, can we take his apology at face value? How, too, can we trust his apology when it didn’t come spontaneously, but only after he’d been caught out in his lie?

Wobbly

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The Senate Democrats succeeded Monday night again in filibustering a House-passed bill that fully funds the DHS because those Democrats support President Barack Obama’s “executive actions” and want small provisions that would block them removed from the bill (yet they won’t permit debates and votes on amendments designed to achieve exactly that; they’d rather just defund the entire Department).

The vote was 47-46 for cloture, which means that 7 Republican Senators folded on this.

Instead of pressuring fellow Republicans to fold, as for instance Lindsey Graham (R, SC) so readily and often does, those gentlemen should be spending that energy pointing out the Democrats’ failure to support DHS in an era of large and increasing threat to our homeland.

Remember this in the primaries leading into the 2016 elections.

On Terrorist Wannabes

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Would-be ISIS terrorists are taking more roundabout routes to Syria in an effort to make European authorities’ attempts to catch them more difficult.

And

At least 3,400 European fighters are believed to have joined the ISIS army….

European authorities are concerned about that, looking for ways to stop the wannabes’ outbound travel. The authorities have this backward. They should let these folks go; Europe is better off without them. The authorities should, instead, focus their efforts on not letting the survivors back in.

Structure and Assimilation

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A commenter on a blog I follow talked briefly about this as part of a larger comment. The thrust of the aside concerned the ink spilled arguing about government structure, but that while structure is important, what’s at bottom is “an increasingly complex and heterogeneous society” that’s hard to manage.

I think that proceeds from a false premise.

Our society need not be “increasingly complex and heterogeneous.” Certainly the technology we use in our society grows more complex, and even more heterogeneous (recall the hoops being jumped through to get Microsoft Windows-based programs to run on an Apple PC, or the hoops requiring satisfaction to get Linux-based systems and Microsoft-based systems to play nice together, to take just one small area). The training and education needed to operate our technologies also grows in depth, breadth, and length of time to achieve operational capacity (just try to let your Ford or Chrysler be all it can be without reading a multi-hundred page tech manual first).

But our society, our interactions with each other and our government need not be more complex or more heterogeneous. Our nation was founded on some simple principles, with personal responsibility and a personal duty to look after those who cannot look after themselves at their core. These are not complex principles. We just over-engineer them as we try to get government to do more and more for us while demanding ever greater and greater precision in execution.

Our current…heterogeneity…also results from an overemphasis of the value of other ways, other moralities, at the expense of our ways and the Judeo-Christian morality at the heart of our nation. That overemphasis flows from, among a number of causes, a lack of effort at assimilation—by us of those who come into our country and by those who come here from other countries. Too many immigrants value their old ways and morals over the ways and morals that created the environment here that contains the very opportunities for which those immigrants and visitors came. And we let them not assimilate, we don’t encourage them or help them reconcile their ways with ours and live with our ways in our house. That failure comes from the nonsense of moral equivalence.

Jeh Johnson and Terrorism

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Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said allowing the agency to lose its federal funding after Friday could jeopardize the US efforts to thwart a domestic terror attack by the Islamic State and will result in 30,000 employees being furloughed.

“It[‘s] including people I depend on every day to stay one step ahead of” the Islamic State, he told NBC’s Meet the Press.

Johnson carefully elided the small detail that 200,000 DHS employees—including all of his security forces—would remain on the job. More importantly, he would do well to direct his concern to his fellow Democrats in the Senate. Those worthies are busily filibustering a bill that fully funds Johnson’s DHS.

Separately, but relatedly, Johnson, in the course of making his Sunday talk show rounds, said this on Fox News Sunday:

The thing I hear from leaders in the Muslim community in this country is ISIL is attempting to hijack my religion[.]

So he says. The only leaders in the Muslim community that are getting any press are from CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood in President Barack Obama’s “Conference on Violent Extremism” coffee klatch a week or so ago. Where are the serious Muslim leaders? I actually agree with the thrust of Johnson’s claim, but if these guys really are upset, they need to speak up. At least as loudly and publicly as are these religion hijackers.

And this on the same show:

Whether it’s referred to as Islamic extremism or violent extremism, what it comes down to is ISIL is a terrorist organization that represents a serious potential threat to our homeland, which has to be addressed. I’m more concerned about that frankly than I am about what two words we use to refer to them.

If that’s the case, if “two words” are such a trivial matter, then why are you so absolutely resistant to using them out loud? Why not just do so and rid yourself of this turbulent distraction?