Category Archives: defense policy

Disband the VA

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In A Conservative’s Treatise on American Government, I wrote about the Veterans Administration’s active and deliberate assault on religious freedom, using our veterans as pawns in that effort. In summary form, here’s what I wrote about the VA’s misbehavior in that arena.

At funeral ceremonies in our National Cemeteries, VA management attempted to dictate the permissible content of prayer, presuming to censor a Pastor’s prayer. Following this—on the heels of a Federal judge’s ruling that the government may not and can not determine the content of prayer—a widow was barred altogether from burying her husband in a national cemetery because the honors and ceremonies associated included prayers and actual references to God.

These scandals have been forgotten by an NLMSM that’s also afflicted with AADD.

My recommendation at the time was to remove the National Cemetary System from the VA and place it directly within the DoD for administration by military personnel.

After the revelations of the inexcusably…shoddy…treatment of our veterans by the VA, including (but not at all limited to) 40 or more of our veterans dying while being held on VA waiting lists to get medical treatment, those waiting lists being cynically manipulated so as to make the VA bureaucrats look good (at the direct expense of those veterans they’re charged with supporting), whistle blowers being suppressed and/or reassigned for being too pushy with their concerns; all of that coupled with President Barack Obama’s decision to do nothing about any of that beyond his formulaic chit-chat about being upset over it, this is no longer enough.

The VA must be disbanded altogether, and all of its personnel returned to the private economy.

The VA has a budget including some $61 billion dedicated to “supporting” veterans and their families, $12.6 billion for education benefits, and a total budget of some $140 billion in FY13 for things like VA payroll, building new medical facilities, R&D for veteran-needed prosthetics development, and the like. There are some 21.5 million veterans in the US, currently.

Those $61 billion should be continued as budget items, and paid to our veterans as vouchers. Our veterans and their families are fully capable of determining for themselves what doctors they should see and at what medical facility they should see them. Their treatment régimes are matters to be determined by the veteran and his doctor; the VA has forfeited its…authority…to have input into this. The $12.6 billion should be continued as budget items, and paid to our veterans as vouchers, also. This is, largely, what happens today; it should be continued.

The remainder of the $140 billion should be continued as budget items, and used to plus up the vouchers paid to our injured veterans.

The VA’s current 170 medical centers and 350 clinics should be returned to the private sector, where competent management will improve these facilities’ ability to serve our veterans—and which increase in the supply of such medical facilities also will have the salutary effect of holding down the cost growth rates of services provided to all Americans by the increased number of medical centers and clinics, if not actually reducing those costs.

Whither our Technological Edge?

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USAF Colonel Dean Hullings, of AFSC’s Cyber Superiority Division told a National Space Symposium audience that the US is behind other countries in cyber defensive and offensive capabilities. The only other countries in the mix, it seems to me, are Russia, the PRC, Iran, and Israel. We don’t need to be leading from behind here.

It’s not only a lack of interest on the part of an administration bent on withdrawing the United States from the world and abrogating our leadership role, though. Bureaucracy—not unique to any particular administration, but an entity in itself—is having a major effect, also.

The agency responsible for cyber-related acquisitions—of any type—is the National Reconnaissance Office, a DoD agency separate from the AFSC. The NRO also is set up to do satellites, not networks or cyberspace—it lacks the expertise here to do equipment, software, or personnel acquisition.

This weakness is overlain by the DoD’s poor acquisition process.

Just getting through the budget system takes about two years. Add the requirements process and you’re talking another two years. That means you are about three years behind the latest technologies, thanks to Moore’s Law.

And, again, there’s that bit about understanding what it is that’s being acquired, whether by NRO or DoD generally:

[F]oreign suppliers might build code into chips or firmware to thwart or warp how a US weapon works….

But that’s not enough of a threat.  There’s this, too:

Militaries have been messing with each other’s radios and radars for generations, transmitting deceptive signals to spoof and jam them. But if the enemy’s radios and radars are run by computers—and most now are—you can also transmit signals to hack them. Then, if the enemy’s computers are linked together—and America’s certainly are—your virus can spread throughout their network.

Hmm….

A Bit of Paranoia

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In 2010, a report from Amnesty International painted a grim picture of North Korea’s crumbling health care system, with witnesses and health care workers recounting barely-functioning hospitals, multiple medication shortages and epidemics caused by malnutrition.

And

US military officials soon grew concerned over the possibility of a lethal pathogen originating within North Korea, as the nation’s health care officials would be nearly powerless to stop the spread of infection. And if such an illness were to continue to expand, a global pandemic would likely occur.

But what if this is deliberate? Baby Kim isn’t stupid, and he is insane enough to give serious thought to such a thing. Northern Korea can’t invade with their army, so might they invade with disease? They’d infect a major fraction of their population (they’re already allowing a major fraction to become infected) and let a goodly number leak across the DMZ, which really is quite porous from the north’s side. And many of these diseases can spread via airborne vectors, against which the DMZ is no barrier at all.

A thug’s version of Napoléon’s levée en masse.

The People’s Republic of China Escalates

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…and the Obama administration bleats. The escalation comes in the context of a PRC attempt to install a large oil rig near the Paracel Islands in waters claimed by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of China (note: not the PRC; their claim is nothing other than an illegitimate sea grab).

…about 80 Chinese vessels had moved into an area…. [Vietnamese officials] said Chinese vessels repeatedly rammed into and fired water cannons at Vietnamese vessels, injuring at least six Vietnamese sailors.

Instead of doing anything concrete, Daniel Russel, Assistant Secretary (of State), Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, while claiming to understand the importance of Vietnam to US security interests in the region, offered this, instead:

Competing sovereignty claims in disputed areas, including the Paracels, must be dealt with peacefully, must be dealt with diplomatically, and must be dealt with in accordance to international laws.

He added that the US has no position on the relative merits of any claims in the region.

Of course not.

Ya ta ta, ya ta ta, ya ta ta. Moral relativism. Ya ta ta, ya ta ta, ya ta ta.

All Two of Them

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The IAEA is planning to visit two—count them—Iranian nuclear…sites. Naturally, IRNA, the government-run Islamic Republic News Agency is touting this as fulfilling “a series of demands made by the United Nations nuclear watchdog.”

But of course. We won’t mention all the other sites that Iran won’t let the IAEA visit, much less inspect thoroughly, on this trip. It’s a toothless watchdog, anyway.

Aspects of the visits include

[a] visit [to] a uranium mine and a uranium-thickening facility in central Iranian towns of Ardakan and Yazd on Monday and Tuesday.

And

“Following the visit, Iran will be able to say that the seven agreed measures between Iran and the agency have fulfilled,” [Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Spokesman Behrouz] Kamalvandi said. “Already six steps have been taken.”

Never mind the advanced notice of such “inspections,” during which Iran can manipulate what will be allowed to be seen.

Never mind, either, that even after the “seven agreed measures” there continues to be no discernible effect on Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons.

The visits, and their predecessors, all take place in a carefully choreographed sequence, with equally set timing, all under Iran’s control. Of course the goodies are being equally carefully choreographed so as to remain hidden from fundamentally incurious UN eyes.