Category Archives: defense policy

Veteran’s Day

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I first posted this in 2011; I’ve added to it in 2014.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving. And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via BlackFive, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?…

…By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

“First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

“Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

“When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me.

“But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.

“When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a —-head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie.

“So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

“You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state.

“And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

“Now, is that a raw deal or what?”

Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

– All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.

Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: “Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road,” is entitled.

– Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

– All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

– It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: “What time will you be home tonight?”

– Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

– Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

– Mike Royko

Next, because this is a day of remembrance and of honoring our surviving veterans, take another moment to visit here and take in Mark Toomey’s piece.

And follow his advice at the end.

Should NATO Cooperate with Russia?

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Can it, even? NATO’s new head, Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, thinks so. After all, “Russia [is] NATO’s biggest neighbor and both [are] here to stay.”

Sure. Enemies must cooperate, because they’re both big. Makes sense. Yeah.

“We simply can’t ignore each other. One way or another, we will have a relationship. The question is what kind of relationship,” he said.

NATO continues to aspire to a cooperative relationship with Russia but to get there Russia would need to want it and to take clear steps to make it possible.

Well, he’s half right: we can’t ignore each other. But Russia’s view of “cooperation” has been clear. It invaded and partitioned Georgia, with one effect being the prevention of that nation from joining NATO as it had wanted to do. It invaded and is busily partitioning Ukraine for the explicitly stated purpose of keeping it from aligning with western Europe, much less joining NATO, a move Ukraine had indicated it was interested in exploring. It has threatened Poland with nuclear attack if it accepted basing American missile shield facilities on its soil. It has moved troops close to the Baltic States and pursued cyberwar against them.

Yeah, we need to cooperate with this enemy. Or NATO needs a new politician to head it up who understands the situation.

Is the Distinction Important?

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The Wall Street Journal ran an article by Danny Yadron and Siobhan Gorman earlier in the week that talked about the penetration by Russian hackers of Federal government computers and those of companies doing business with the government. It’s an important article, and I recommend you read it all, but I want to focus on a couple of statements made in it that go to the heart of why we’re having so much trouble dealing with our enemies.

The statements are these:

A US official said differentiating between Russian criminal hackers and government hackers is difficult because the government uses cybersurveillance tools created by criminal groups and criminals use tools developed by the government.

And

“It [the recent hacking of JP Morgan Chase & Co] looks to be criminal and of Russian origin,” the US official said. But when it comes to gauging whether that criminal element is working with the government, “you’re back into that gray area. You really can’t tell.”

Russia is a totalitarian state, for all that it has “elections.” All the modern, cool totalitarian states do this anymore. As such a regime, the “criminal” hackers are limited in doing what they do without the Russian government’s active condoning of that behavior. This is further substantiated by the ubiquitousness of the free exchange of tools between these hackers and their government.

Whether any particular hack job is done by hackers or by formal agents of the Russian government, both are working for the benefit of Russia and for (not only to) the detriment of us.

Misunderstandings like these, of the fundamental character of certain of our enemies, are at the heart of why we’re having so much trouble defending ourselves from them and ultimately of defeating them.

Russian Aggression

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…in eastern Ukraine, but not only there.

Russia plans to increase defense spending over 20 percent in 2015, with a lot of the additional money going to rebuilding Soviet era facilities in the newly acquired Crimea. This includes radar stations and naval facilities.

Naturally, all of this will support Russia’s continued occupation of partitioned Georgia, and it will facilitate Russia’s pending aggression against the Odessa Oblast of western Ukraine on the Sea of Azov, which stands between the Sea and Moldova, another Russian target as it seeks to restore the Soviet empire. It also eases Russian support for Vladimir Putin’s ally and BFF, Bashar al Assad in Syria.

Here, too:

…there’s plenty of Russian misbehavior against other neighbors as well. Finland reports that Russian aircraft increasingly test Finnish air defenses and twice recently Russian warships have threatened a Finnish research vessel operating in international waters in the Baltic. The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) are receiving similar harassment, as well as Russian offers of a large discount on what they pay for Russian natural gas if they will leave NATO.

Richard Feynman on Theory

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Cross-posted from Ricochet. It’s behind the paywall, but Ricochet is well worth the subscription price; I heartily recommend it.

Richard Feynman was a theoretical physicist who taught at Cornell University, but he also was a just plain scientist.

He had a thought on theory.

You cannot prove a vague theory wrong. If the guess that you make is poorly expressed and the method you have for computing the consequences is a little vague then…you see that the theory is good as it can’t be proved wrong. If the process of computing the consequences is indefinite, then with a little skill any experimental result can be made to look like an expected consequence.

Now where have we seen this vague theory technique put into action lately? In politics, perhaps?