Long Time Coming
It is almost the anniversary of the day that changed American life, and not for the better. I will be busy that day, so I took the opportunity to visit my shipmates who were murdered by the Saudi jihadis at the Pentagon.
The groundskeepers were watering the 9/11 memorial and the graves adjacent to them, presumably in preparation for the anniversary.
There is something I do not understand about Arlington- some of the markers have the letters filled in with bold black color. Others are natural, which makes Vince’s stone a little more difficult to identify, since there only some of the highlighting in the letters that mark his name, rank, Service, Wartime service era, birth and death dates and his combat decoration. There is no question these soldiers, sailors, airmen and Defense civilians were killed in combat.
It makes me wonder why the Department was so insistent that the victims of Major Hassan were not. So many curious things have happened over the last dozen years, as if we are in denial of exactly who we are fighting.
Oh well. I am sure those in power know best, and what is the award of the Purple Heart to them now, except an honest acknowledgement of what was involved in their sacrifice?
That is not true with Mac, which startled me. I mean, I was just there. I remember the day I drove him over to attend a service at the Columbarium, a combat casualty of the war in Iraq, and he pointed out the stone in Section 66 where his wife Billie was waiting for him to join her. He pointed it out as we drove by.
After the grand procession when his family, the Army’s Old Guard, the assembled officers and Sailors of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Navy Honor Guard and the Piper laid him to rest, I never thought I could lose him.
Vince and Dan and the others I could find it by touch at this point. But I was filled with dismay as I walked the place I thought I could never forget.
I never thought to look up the number that is engraved on the pale white stone, which would have made it easy. Instead, I had to go row on row, peering at the names. I ran across a couple of stones with the Congressional Medal etched on the surface, two roses in my hands.
In the end, I found Mac right where we had left him, joined forever with his wife Billie.
I left the roses, one on each side, and put a penny on top of the stone.
As I drove away in the Panzer, I was listening to the White House Chief of Staff on the radio. He is a fellow named Dennis McDonough, and he was making the case for military action in Syria:
“The common-sense test says Assad is responsible for this. He should be held to account.”
The Common Sense test? That is a new one on me. Then he went on to describe the concept of a limited, targeted and consequential attack.
I had to consider that carefully as I navigated up the bluff through the gardens of stone, row on row, terraced into the slopes. The targeting part should go without saying- if you think the professionals would consider any other approach…well, that would be unprofessional.
And as to that Common Sense thing. I think maybe we should have retired the phrase after Tom Paine used it in Revolutionary times It seems to have changed meanings down through the years, like everything that comes after those words is not.
It is almost as bad as statements that begin with the words: “the fact of the matter is…” We know enough now to know that once those words are uttered, it isn’t.
Funny, this common sense matter overseas. The fact of the matter is that This place and these white stones have been a long time coming, and all of us, myself and all my comrades, will be a long time gone.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Big Casino
(The defaced Great Seal of the United States at the gate to the former US Embassy in Tehran. Photo Wikipedia).
I have been all over the map this morning with the usual suspects.
There’s all kinds of interesting stuff going on. The number one thing was the result of the Big Game in The Big House in Ann Arbor, and it was the first thing I looked for, having fallen asleep in my chair trying to watch the second quarter broadcast from under the lights in Ann Arbor.
Then I checked the papers. I have yet to hear anything from the Mainstream Media about the changing of the guard in the Australian Government, and don’t expect to. It doesn’t fit the narrative, and that, sadly, is how we get our news.
Then there was talk about the two-dozen private yachts stuck in the resurgent arctic ice. The historic low ice-level that happens at this time of year was widely expected to have most of the Arctic Ocean wide open for navigation. Apparently not the case, and the boats are going to need rescuing by Canadian ice-breakers.
A noted climate scientist a few years ago had predicted that the North Pole would be ice-free by now, but apparently Mother Nature has a few tricks up her voluminous sleeves.
Other old pals are drafting letters to their elected fools about Syria. I joined in the fray, contributing this: “What will history make of the twin phrases that sum up the Administration’s policy-making process and it’s entirely predictable consequences?”
“Lead from behind,” and then, “What does it matter?”
But I have to confess my ambivalence about all that, and I don’t know if I will be sending any letters to anyone.
There is a compelling national interest in this crisis, beyond the beheadings by the rebels and indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians by a government armed with poison gas.
That national security interest is the long war with the Iranians.
I was thinking about that, out loud, at Willow last night. Mac’s sons were there, good guys as you might expect, and the Macaroon Lady. We sorted through the grab bag of events that have had me waxing hysterical over the course of the last five years: the economy, the real unemployment numbers, the wacky foreign policy, the even wackier domestic policy stuff, and now Syria.
“The problem is not which of the bloody actors in Syria we are supporting. The Assad Regime is guilty of war crimes. The Rebels are guilty of atrocities, and toppling Assad is de facto handing over the weapons of mass destruction to other bad guys who have attacked us here in the homeland, almost a dozen years ago to the day,” I said.
“It is the Iranians with whom we have been at war since the illegal occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran on the 4th of November, 1979.” We agreed about that- or I think we did- most people are wary about talking about it in public.
Then we went on to discuss the reasons we were meeting, which was the War College Symposium and the research into the real- and lost- story of the blunders that led to the Pearl Harbor attack.
There are some troubling parallels. When I got home I was still thinking about Iran. I thought back to the days when it began. We were steaming somewhere in the Indian Ocean that November, and when news came to the taking of the Embassy, the big ship heeled over as the Admiral directed her to strike a northerly course.
The Carter Administration did not want to be perceived as over bellicose at the time, and we were shortly directed to continue to a planned port visit in Africa. But we were back, soon enough, and then gone again by the time Operation EAGLE CLAW launched from the decks of the USS Nimitz to meet in disaster at DESERT ONE.
It is interesting. Nimitz and her embarked air wing are again Johnny on the Spot in the Red Sea, in position to support whatever it is we may or may not do.
Anyway, some of that accounts for my ambivalence about all this.
I am not a supporter of the Administration, but I do support the institutions. I am reluctant to see much more sawdust run out of the Presidency. And there is more, if anyone ever gets to it.
The Syrian horror is part of a proxy battle between the House of Saud (Sunni and Arab) and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (Shia and Persian).
It is much more complex than those simple cardboard cut-outs. But those are the two major sources of funding, and of course the Saudis can squeeze the West (and us) with oil. I do not like that, any more than I like the zealous Wahhabi orthodoxy the Saudis are planting in new mosques all over the world.
But there are all sorts of players are involved in this conflict; private jihadis eager to fight the infidel, whoever that is, Hezbollah, the al Quds force, various ethnic and religious factors undigested from the end of the Ottoman Empire.
The fight is in Syria at the moment, but could, with the right provocation, spill in unexpected directions. Our friends in the neighborhood are alarmed, and rightly so. The Israelis and Jordanians are likely to be caught in whatever frag pattern happens with the onset of military operations.
The Turks are squirming a bit, having supported some of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist elements in their long slide from secular to Sharia state.
I do not have any bright ideas on what to do about it. Maybe the President will come up with something suitably martial in appearance to allow the participants to slaughter each other with only conventional weapons.
But it does occur to me that maybe we ought to consider where this all started and come to grips with reality: how about putting Tehran and Riyadh at the top of the target list? I mean, if we are going to go it alone, why not go for Big Casino?
I mean, it is no further-fetched than what we are talking about now, incredible options designed to improve credibility.
It appears we are going to get there eventually, so why not cut out the middle-men? I mean, it is not any more ridiculous than anything else about all this, is it?
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
The Land of OZ
Nope. Not going to do job numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics can put the rosiest smile on things, but the fact remains that more people left the work force than got new jobs, and those that did get work got it part-time.
I am not going to deal with the G20 conference in St. Petersburg, and I am not going to analyze whether the President got into Mr. Putin’s face or not. At this point, to borrow a phrase, what does that matter?
I am particularly going to stay away from the foreign policy nonsense, except to wonder in passing if the arms-transfer operation that was going on in Benghazi has a role in who had what to throw at whom in poor bleeding Syria.
So that does not leave much, or rather it means there is everything else. Here in the apartment, sea-bags are stacked by the door to accompany my sailor. He is departing in a few days for life underway a half a world away.
I was thinking how much I am going to miss him, and have savored the last few days spent generally hanging around, doing not much, and just enjoying his presence. But the distance he will cover next week is almost as far as the sun-drenched shores of OZ, magical Australia, where something remarkable happened today.
It is always risky to have public opinions on the internal affairs of other nations, even those with whom we are divided by a common tongue, so I will only report the events at a high level and stay away from the nuance outsiders cannot understand.
The last time I spent any significant time in Oz, Conservative John Howard was Prime Minister, and the rule of the Labor Party had not begun. But I have followed with daily interest, since I have an Expat pal who is making a life there, and the Climate Change debate there is much discussed around the world.
They are having Spring now, after bitter wars about the last Angry Summer, which may, or may not have actually been anything of the sort. Emotions run high there, as they do here, and it is interesting to look in at how some of the experiments in public policy have worked out.
I follow Australian events in a certain context. The Green movement is strong down under, and they were a critical power-broker in the Australian Senate.
(Liberal PM John Howard in 2006)
When I was there, the Age of John Howard was clearly ending, and people were ready for change. The whole Chinese thing was stoking anxiety about the new Pacific order, and about illegal immigration as people sought to get away from it. In fact, that was the whole reason I was in Canberra and talking to officials responsible for dealing with the tidal wave of people seeking asylum from the storm.
There are multiple political parties on the Australian landscape, and being a bi-polar American, I get lost easily. Liberals are not, Labor doesn’t, Green is, and so on.
Anyway, Labor came to power in November of 2007, unseating the coalition Liberal-led government that had been in power since 1996.
(Labor PM Kevin Rudd).
Kevin Rudd, a mercurial mandarin-speaking Progressive, started off the turbulent six years of Labor rule before being deposed by Julia Gillard in a 2010 Labor Party back-room coup. She was the first woman to take the Prime Minister’s seat in Australian history.
(First female PM Julia Gillard).
Among other things, she presided over the imposition of Rudd’s hated Carbon Tax in the apparent belief that taxing the Australian people would somehow reduce Chinese emissions. Dissatisfaction was evident from the beginning, as leaks sprung from confidential Cabinet meetings.
The leakers revealed that Gillard had pre-channeled Mitt Romney’s “47%” remarks, questioning the cost of the pensioners’ increases- the Aussie version of Social Security- on the grounds that “old people never vote for us.” She also opposed a parental leave scheme on the grounds that people beyond child-bearing age would resent it, as would stay-at-home mothers.
She reportedly argued that the parental leave scheme was “politically correct” but not politically helpful to the Labor Party.
Over time, even her supporters agreed that she had become a liability, and restored Rudd to the Prime Minister’s office in a desperate bid to cling to power.
This morning, voters repudiated the whole mess. Liberal National Coalition leader Tony Abbott was swept into office in a landslide win as voters punished the outgoing Labor government for six years of mismanaging the economy and failing to exploit the country’s mining boom. The House appears to be solidly in his column; there are different and preferential rules for the Senate and we will not know how that works out, possibly for as long as a week.
(Newly elected PM Tony Abbott)
Mr. Abbott continues a tradition of dynamic Australian leadership unseen in the States: he is a former boxer and Rhodes scholar who trained as a priest. These days, he is a volunteer life-guard and triathlete who is often pictured in trim Speedos.
I don’t know if his promises will work out; as we have discovered here, running the affairs of a nation state are a little more complex than they appear, and we have had our own six-year run of interesting and muddled events. But Mr. Abbott has promised to “restore political stability, cut taxes and crack down on asylum seekers arriving by boat.”
We might want to try that here some time. For good or for ill, we do not have a Parliamentary system, and there are forty months to go on our collective adventure in Hope and Change.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Breaking Point
Mr. C.J. Box can write a hell of a western yarn. When I was stuck in bed for a couple months last year, I read the whole series of his mysteries featuring Wyoming Game Warden, Joe Pickett.
Pickett is an awesome character. He is human and frail, and he gets mad and sad by turns, and he is committed to the land and the animals he is sworn to protect. As a Warden, he takes the low pay and vast open spaces in stride, and his family is front-and-center in all the tales.
If you want some page-turners (I know, where the hell did the summer go!) the Pickett series is a good place to start, and a gateway drug for Craig Johnson’s fine law-and-disorder westerns featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County just north of Joe Pickett’s country in the Powder River district of Big Wild Wonderful Wyoming.
Anyway, a pal had just finished the latest Joe Pickett yarn, which has the plot hook featuring an out-of-control EPA, which terrorizes an ordinary family over land use policy. He wrote a long and thoughtful note about the militarization of local police forces and the appearance of SWAT Teams on the rolls of such institutions as the Department of Education, Agriculture and the Social Security Administration.
It is all sort of crazy. I know this is neither new nor unexpected, but it is sort of startling.
This is not a political rant, or rather, at least it is not partisan. I think Mr. Nixon started it all, way back when, and Presidents as diverse as Reagan and Clinton have presided upon it all. The ill-conceived War of Drugs is part of it, the strange and corrosive program that has incentivized law enforcement to arm its various echelons to the teeth, and use confiscation of private property as an extra-budgetary funding mechanism.
That was all bad enough, but the post-9/11 militarization of just about everything started by Mr. Bush and continued by the current Administration is nothing short of stunning.
My pal sent a note from the Alaska Dispatch that he fond illuminating:
When agents with the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force surged out of the wilderness around the remote community of Chicken wearing body armor and jackets emblazoned with POLICE in big, bold letters, local placer miners didn’t quite know what to think.
Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size display of paramilitary force to check for dirty water? Some of the miners, who run small businesses, say they felt intimidated. Others wonder if the actions of the agents put everyone at risk. When your family business involves collecting gold far from nowhere, unusual behavior can be taken as a sign someone might be trying to stage a robbery. How is a remote placer miner to know the people in the jackets saying POLICE really are police?
Miners suggest it might have been better all around if officials had just shown up at the door – as they used to do – and said they wanted to check the water.
I wrote him back and said it was sort of passé, and had been going on for years. In “Breaking Point,” the EPA District Administrator character is so vile as to resemble Snidely Whiplash.
The reality of the back-story is even worse and indicts the whole system in much the way that the “two rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati” story was actually a symptom of an agency completely out of control from the Administrator on down.
The artistic rendering of an oppressed family in Breaking Point was lifted almost in its entirety from the real-life story of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Sackett, of Priest Lake, Idaho. If you do not recall, I will touch on it briefly, since it defies reason.
(The Sackett property, high and dry.)
The Sacketts attempted to build a house on their half-acre of land, intending it to be their retirement residence. The property was bracketed by other existing homes and their land already had sewer lines in place. After they broke ground, the EPA showed up, claiming the family had violated the Clean Water Act by placing fill materials into “wetlands.”
Their property was designated- arbitrarily and capriciously- as such and thus under the jurisdiction of Washington. I have no idea how they were selected for persecution- but the legal system said they had no recourse.
The lot did not- and does not- not harbor a lake, pond or stream, yet the EPA http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/united-states-environmental-protection-agency/ required them to obtain a building permit that would cost more than the value of their land. The Sacketts filed suit, but their request was dismissed by a federal judge. Eventually, on appeal, the Supreme Court ruled against the EPA.
(The Sacketts, dangerous defacers of the mud, and enemies of the State.)
The horror show of EPA’s harassment included a $30,000 daily fine for non-compliance clearly intended to intimidate and cow the family- it potentially amounted to millions. It was a demonstration of Federal over-reach that was quite extraordinary. Some additional tales of the unexpected (and unconstitutional) over-reach of the EPA are at the link below.
My sister has a life narrative with application to the Alaska angle. She fell in love and married wild David, a Seattle guy who became enamored of the idea that there was a business case to re-file for expired mining claims in Alaska. The married and decamped for the Gold Fields.
The Klondike miners of the Gold Rush were a brute-force crowd, and the theory- accurate, as it turned out- was that they left a lot behind in the tailings from their initial digging. The business case was that the increase in the price in gold made it worthwhile to re-process the tailings with better technology.
In the context of the Oil Shock of the day, it was completely true. I have a nugget tie-tack around somewhere (or not) pulled out of the waste left behind by the wildcatters. The issue swiftly became a spark of contention between the feds and the miners.
The miners were a wild and wooly lot, and given the remote places and abundant two and four-footed wildlife around the claims, naturally were armed.
The Park Service took issue with the fact that the miners had a reasonable expectation that they could access their claims. They prohibited the construction of access roads, and perhaps there was an initial case in which the Rangers showed up in Smokey Bear hats, asked politely for the miners to cease and desist trying to get access to legally filed and perfectly legal mining sites. Maybe.
But the situation and acrimony swiftly devolved to armed Feds confronting armed miners. So I completely understand how the EPA might think that a water inspection might require a full-blown SWAT team.
The point of all this, directly, is that the militarization of the Regulators and the police has proceeded apace since those long ago days. The Federal courts have repeatedly validated the intrusive and illegal antics of the Agencies.
Up in Alaska, the price of gold fell and that generation of miners moved on to other things. Given these unsettled times, their sons and daughters are back in the gold fields, and the Greenies who drive the anti-energy, anti-growth, anti-mining agenda of the central Government are again facing armed citizens in the wilds.
Something must be done about them, right?
A perspective from the Feds is possibly in order. Robert W. Service was right about the vast North.
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”
I wish I could say this was just an aberration from the Last Frontier, but as the Sacketts found out in Idaho, this is happening all over.
I did not mention the SWAT Team in Kenosha, WI, that appeared at the animal rescue center to confiscate and kill a fawn named Giggles. I wish I was making this up, no kidding:
We are much more accustomed to the abuses of law enforcement. I could give you a list of innocent civilians shot and killed in drug busts gone wrong- but it is too depressing. The Cato Institute has a nice white paper on the results of the 40,000 SWAT raids conducted annually in America:
http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/overkill-rise-paramilitary-police-raids-america
It occurs to me that my property in Culpeper is bounded by two streams which, after a storm, run swift and loud enough to be heard up on the deck on the house.
I am lucky the EPA was not monitoring the construction of the house and outbuildings in 2003. But of course, that means I am under their jurisdiction and should probably not defame the fine (and heavily armed) bureaucrats.
I don’t think I am a wetland, nor close to a breaking point, but of course, that is a matter entirely up to a benevolent government to decide, isn’t it?
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Buzzing Refuge Farm
(Secretary of State Kerry explains to the Senate how a pencil works yesterday. Photo AP)
It is not that I don’t have enough weighing on my mind- I mean, did you see how Secretary Kerry looked yesterday? This has not been a great week for anyone.
I could not dwell overlong on the prospect of general war in the Middle East, though. I was filling out legal paperwork with the LTJG yesterday morning.
That is a normal part of pre-deployment planning, and in addition to the Last Will and Testament, I recommended a Power of Attorney, in case there was something that needed to be done in his extended absence. He is not planning on being back for a couple years.
It is routine but sobering, considering the disposition of one’s effects, pending the departure to the Great Mystery, and I ensured that he knew that the POA was effective only on the event of his incapacitation or specific written instruction.
Since we were doing it anyway, I took the opportunity to do the same- mine obviously more complex due to my manifold follies, and I told him I would have an addendum with the various bank and brokerage accounts, locations of firearms and other small items of transactional value.
And I designated him the Health Custodian, with the stipulation that should the event occur, chose Do Not Resuscitate. I thought about death, in passing, resolving that if there was a choice at the end of things, I did not want a long slow decline on a bad glide slope like my Dad.
Which got me to thinking about the Bucket List, and how much I would like to just take off on a road trip. Actually, I thought about a road trip in the sky.
I got an interesting account of some historical artifacts scattered across the west. When the freedom of the air was new, the concept of rapid delivery of written communications was revolutionary. You know: legal documents, like the ones I filed with my son- and letters containing sensitive or emotional information could not be trusted to telegram.
The Postal Air Service was commissioned to fly our contracts, wills and missives of passion on the wings of eagles over the wagon-tracks of the way west.
(Colorado Air Lines Mail bird- A surplus Curtis Jenny. One of those props is hung over the door to Refuge Farm).
To guide the dauntless birdmen, a series of beacons and concrete arrows were established right across the vast nation:
Every ten miles there was an arrow, painted bright yellow with a little generator shack and a derrick with a bright rotating beacon. The shacks are (mostly) gone, and the derricks were harvested for scrap during Great Hate II, but the arrows remain, now cryptic and forlorn as the relics of an alien civilization.
(A montage of relics of the past- cryptic now, they guided the Bird Men of yesteryear.)
I was thinking about a trip by car, but obviously, the arrows are not tied to the modern road network. Then I thought about hiring a plane and a pilot and going to see them myself.
That brought back memories of a marvelous book years ago, written by ex-Navy pilot Steven Coontz, author of the Flight of the Intruder and some other thrillers. The one that stuck with me was a much more honest and personal account of his love-hate relationship with a 1943 Stearman open-cockpit biplane.
That was enough to hook me right there. In my Fleet days, I had flown a few hops in the venerable workhorse A-6, and I thoroughly enjoyed the launch and recovery process on USS Forrestal.
Zero to flying in a couple of seconds, the kick in the gut as powerful as a punch from Mike Tyson.
On one sortie, I even had a chance to personally take the first battle-group image of the Soviet Kirov cruiser on her maiden deployment to the Med, her proud wake shouting out: Warship!
(Kirov the way we say her that fall day in 1989 from T-Bone’s A-6. Close aboard pass, anyone? “Welcome to the Med!”)
But enough of that- suffice it to say that there was compelling interest in the memories of Coontz’s Navy days, and the freedom that came with his best-sellers to indulge in something truly quixotic: the refurbishment of the ancient Boeing Stearman biplane, and a three-month adventure, flying across America’s heartland.
Of course, we know aviation today as a sort of low-grade torture conducted in large aluminum tubes, with harassment by uniformed thugs and accompanied by inconvenience and discomfort.
General Aviation is a horse of a different color. Operating from small and sometimes uncontrolled fields, there is a wild freedom of movement in the small aircraft, and a boundless mobility. The account of his roaming around the country is contained in “Cannibal Queen,” the name he bestowed on the Stearman for its quirky handling.
(Stearman painted in Navy colors, like the one Steven Coontz owns and flies).
Between the A-6 Intruder and the Stearman, this was personal. Dad qualified in the Stearman in 1944 or early ’45- I would have to dig out his logbook down at the farm to confirm the date.
His interest in aviation did not wane after the war ended, and he kept flying in the Reserves, though Big Mama made him quit flying in the Reserves in the mid-1950s, admonishing him that he had three little ones for whom to provide, and enough was enough. I remember sitting at the dinner table for that discussion.
Dad would still take us to fly-ins when they occurred in the fields north of Detroit, and my brother and I were astonished when Raven walked up to a barnstormer who was flogging a Stearman around the country, handed him $25, and bundled the three of us into the front cockpit for a couple quick and astonishing circuits of the grass field.
Our barnstormer was intimately connected with his machine, and I remember only the exhilaration, not the concern that Coontz described as he mastered the tail-dragger’s antics on landing. I can understand how alien it is, landing with the nose canted up, obscuring the polit’s view of the runway. Big Mama was horrified as we gushed about the adventure on our return in the Rambler station Wagon.
With the exception of a distant memory of a flight on a TWA DC-3 to Cleveland one time, all my aviation experience except for that biplane ride has been on tricycle gear, where the pilot gets to see everything that is coming.
Anyway, renting a Stearman (and pilot) to go look at concrete arrows would be an expensive taxi- but it would also open up a window to see something of the old days. Barnstorming.
Damn, that would be fun.
I was turning that over in my mind when I remembered what I had seen in the local paper down at Refuge Farm last weekend.
The big Culpeper air show is coming on October 10th. The theme this year is to honor the 70th anniversary of the debut of the AT-6 Texan, or SNJ in Navy parlance. The SNJ was another trainer that Dad flew- a modern looking mono-winged, closed-canopy, radial-engine airplane.
There are still a fair number of them around, since they are not nearly as complex (or difficult to manage) as the real combat aircraft of the day. Which is not to say that the Texans were not pressed into combat service.
They were a front line airplane for the Syrian Air Force, of all things, in the 1948 war the established the sate of Israel, and served as Forward Air Control birds in Vietnam.
(A brace of AT-6 Texans in this most excellent Kodak color shot from 1943).
I am betting there might be a dauntless airman offering rides at the Air Show. It won’t be for $25 bucks, though. These days that would not pay to turn over the radial engine.
I don’t think I can afford to hire a warbird for a flight across the country- but I might be able to spring for a couple circuits over T. I. Martin airfield, conveniently located on the Brandy Station battlefield.
For a couple extra bucks, I might convince the pilot to make a bombing run on Refuge Farm.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
The Devil You Know
(Secretary of State John Kerry.)
I had to look away from the train wreck in the Middle East yesterday and appreciate the bizarre, subtle and ultimately sort of comforting antics of the North Koreans. The current basketball diplomacy with goofy Dennis Rodman, following immediately on the heels of a stern rejection of a visit by a senior US delegation and the execution by firing squad of a rock band- well, it is strange but expected.
The latest antics of the Kim Dynasty represent the passive-aggressive behavior of a devil we know. I would just as soon see regime change there, but I am reluctant for anyone I know to die doing it. In the meantime, I do trust the brutal self-interest of the Northerners to keep their regime- barely- on the other side of a Red Line.
But as much as I enjoy side-shows, and the Rodman visit is a great one, the affair in the center ring has a certain hypnotic compulsion.
According to my research, the United States has intervened in overseas civil wars eleven times:
You can quibble with precise definitions, but let’s try this list:
Korea (1950’s); Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Dominican Republic (1960’s); Lebanon (1980’s); the Yugoslav Wars/Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia and Iraq (1990’s); and Libya (2011).
How did we do on the scorecard?
Mixed outcomes, naturally. Technically, we are still at war with the Kim franchise, and the people of the North are still effectively enslaved. The South, well, it is an economic miracle. Vietnam? I think we won, but we had to lose first. I like the Dominican Republic as a travel destination, which would generally mark success. Far more nuanced are the results of Lebanon, Somalia and Iraq. I am not booking vacations in any of them.
And Benghazi, of course.
Haiti? Well, maybe we prevented the descent into the abyss and not all the citizens moved to Miami. Call it a draw.
Of course you could point out that Iraq was not having a civil war until we invaded and deposed the elected (hahaha) government. Then of, of course, we refused to obey the Pottery Barn Rule of “You break it, you take it.”
In the Balkans, I think you may argue that we saved the bacon of the ethnic minority Muslim population, though a lot of them were ethnically cleansed before the shooting stopped. I think there may be a lesson in there someplace about “boots on the ground,” which was a topic of discussion in the Senate yesterday.
Poor General Dempsey, Chairman of the fearsome Joint Staff. What a military mission he has been handed! The Pentagon will do the best with what it is directed to do- but I do not recall a mission statement as muddled as what was discussed yesterday.
General Dempsey responded to questions from Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) about the proposed resolution authorizing military action in Syria:
DEMPSEY: “The answer to whether I support additional support for the moderate opposition is yes.”
CORKER: “And this authorization will support those activities in addition to responding to the weapons of mass destruction?”
DEMPSEY: “I don’t know how the resolution will evolve, but I support…”
CORKER: “What you’re seeking. What is it you’re seeking?”
DEMPSEY: “I can’t answer that, what we’re seeking.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I have been a military planner in my life, and that is about as bad a mission statement as I have heard. The Joint Staff Publication on planning told us the first step was to re-state the mission direction back to higher authority, to ensure we were going in the right direction.
If the Chairman of the Joint Staff can’t do it, I pity the poor Lt Cols and Commanders who are going to have to do the OPLANs.
Anyway, not doing something doesn’t appear to be an option, and in this incredible world, it is all about credibility.
As this lurches forward, it is important to remember the President’s National Security Team and how they frame the issues for him.
Tom Donilon was still National Security Advisor when the “Red Line” on chemical weapons use was declared by the President. I don’t know whether that was the result of a determined policy decision, or a simple statement that you would think that the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction on civilians would have to be a Red Line somewhere, wouldn’t you?
(National Security Advisor Susan Rice.)
Tom is gone, thank goodness, but his relief at the NSC is Susan Rice, Africa Specialist, former Ambassador to the United Nations, and a front-runner to succeed Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State until that “what does it matter” moment followed the Benghazi affair. The National Security Advisor is not a confirmable position and that was about the best they could do to reward Ambassador Rice for taking one for the team.
So as we look at this mess, we have to think about how everyone came to where they are, and one of those is a place where the United States did not intervene. A place where Ambassador Rice used to have an abiding interest: Rwanda.
That is one way to figure out why Syria would qualify for direct intervention while other conflicts do not.
At the time of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, Ambassador Rice reportedly said, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November Election? ” Rice subsequently acknowledged the mistakes made at the time and felt that a debt needed repaying.
The mistakes are estimated at a half to a full million Rwandans killed, or 20% of the population.
The inability or failure of the Clinton administration to do anything about the killing naturally has informed the NSC Chief’s views on possible military interventions. She later was quoted that “…if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.”
So here we go. For the record, I am completely in line with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on where we are going. I just don’t know the name of the devil who will greet us when we get there.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
OPINTEL Note: The unannounced Israeli missile test yesterday may have provoked a response by the Russian Federation. ITAR TASS reports that Russia’s Black and Baltic Sea Fleets’ are each contributing a Ropucha-class landing ship to the Russian force in the East Med. The warshps- Novocherkassk and Minsk- will bolster the Russian presence with a total of 375 Marines.
(Project-775 Ropucha-class heavy Landing Ship Novocherkassk).
Where are they going? Duh. Smart money is on Tartus, the Russian naval enclave on Syria’s southwest coast. This is probably just in case things get nasty and an extraction of Russian nationals is in order. That is basically the same function of the USN amphibs present in the region- not “boots on the ground.”
President Putin is actually sounding sort of reasonable. He has called the use of weapons of mass destruction a crime, and stated that Russia “will take a principled position” once it gets “objective, precise data as to who committed these crimes. If it is established that means of mass destruction are used by the rebels, what will the United States do with the rebels?” Putin said. In the meantime, Kremlin sources indicate Russia will continue to supply the Assad regime with arms.
We have arrived at a magical place.
Good God.
Encore Performance
(NBA Hall of-Famer Dennis Rodman (right) and the Outstanding Leader (far left). The translator in the back is the same one who helped me when I lunched with the DRPK’s General Secretary years ago. Job Security. Photo KCNA via Reuters).
Well, put away the white shoes. Summer is over. The pool is shuttered today; Milos the Polish Lifeguard is off on an airplane with his buddies for a trip to South Beach and Key West. He claims he will be back to unlock the pool this weekend, and then the countdown to the last weekend begins.
Marty 2 and Mary Margaret were already planning the party they are going to hold that afternoon, and invite all the people who count to Patio Beach to conduct the solemn (if inebriated) ritual of The Last Swim.
OK- you can say my reaction is hysterical and overblown, this constant whining about the glittering blue water, but I could be yammering about Middle East policy, you know?
BTW, if you think I am going to offer some knee jerk castigation of disorganized policymaking and wishful thinking, I am not going to do it. I am supporting the President on this one, out of respect for the office and for the Nation. The President if off to Russia this evening for the G-20, and I am sure we will be hearing more on all this
With no real good choices, though, and no clearly identifiable good guys, it is much more appealing to concentrate of things that are much more black and white. Or maybe fuchsia and indigo, considering the personalities.
I was boggled this morning, attempting to plumb the mysterious meanings of famed NBA star Dennis Rodman’s encore trip to the Hermit Kingdom.
Dennis was identified as the tall man with the green hair as he transited the departure zone at the Beijing airport, headed for the North’s Air Koryo gate. He said to media representatives that he “plans to hang out with Kim Jong Un, have a good time and maybe bridge some cultural gaps. Maybe start a basketball league.”
He landed on Labor Day, and was greeted by Son Kwang Ho, vice-chairman of North Korea’s Olympic Committee.
You will recall that the Outstanding Leader just wrapped up the execution of the pop-group to which his wife and ex-girlfriend used to belong, just days after Pyongyang rejected a visit by a U.S. envoy who had hoped to bring home Kenneth Bae, an American missionary jailed there.
Beats me. I have a pal who also served in the ROK and he summed it up this way:
“A 6’8″ heavily-tattooed basketball player – who once pressed charges against his 5’1″ wife Michele for assault and battery and physical abuse, makes friends with a twisted, power-mad son of a twisted, power-mad son of a twisted, bloody dictator, who juggles a nuclear weapons development program with the inability to feed his people and the execution of an entire rock group for supposedly making a sex tape.”
I won’t include his acerbic comments on the Middle East. I am going to ignore that, now that the USS Nimitz Strike Group and a couple of amphibs filled with Marines have been added to the equation.
If you wrote a novel that contained this kind of insanity it would be declared ‘unreal,’ incredible,’ ‘too bizarre’ and therefore not worth reading.
The Northerners are a fascinating (and horrifying) lot who never cease to entertain. My surreal opportunity to lunch and joke with the General Secretary of the North Korean Worker’s Party was one for the ages.
Me: “So, Mr. Kim, how are those multiple rocket launchers pointed at Seoul defensive weapons?”
Kim: “It is very much like your “defensive” aircraft carriers.
Both: Smiles.
The North abruptly called off the official visit about Citizen Bae because it said the U.S. had ruined the atmosphere for talks by holding a drill over South Korea with nuclear-capable B-52 bombers.
Rodman said the purpose of his visit was to “show people around the world that we as Americans can actually get along with North Korea.”
I am hoping we can get along with someone.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twittter: @jayare303
EastMed OPINTEL
OK- sorry. I am a little distracted this morning. As you know, I have been sort of agitated of late. Change of circumstance and all that- new digs, new situation, pool closing, LTJG Socotra getting ready to ship out for the Fleet.
There is a feeling of change in the air, the seasons doing their thing, and me doing mine.
As an antidote, I drafted a gentle story with a gentle and accepting ending for this morning- it really is great to wake here in the deep silence of the Virginia countryside. It had everything: the talking box turtle in the forecourt, the gentle rumors of relationships between the newly arrived and local residents, an appearance by the Russian Princess and the owner of the Croftburn Farms market- you know, the whole country spiel with the whole country rhythm.
Folksy, you know.
Anyway, I was polishing up the bit about the fieldmouse in the mailbox- sorry, I am going to leave you hanging on that one, when Natasha wrote to ask about the Russian Navy in the Eastern Med. I swung from folksy fluff to OPINTEL mode and started to draft the Daily Rag as we did at the Fleet Operational Intelligence Center (FOSIC) at Pacific Fleet Headquarters.
I wrote her back after my fingers flew between screens, checking the latest ELINT and IMINT of the relevant operating bases, the INTSUM from 6th Fleet and the Fleet Intelligence Collection Manual. I had a rough and ready summary ready to go in about 45 minutes and mashed the button to send the RAG to the Streamliner switch:
“Uppers, Mate! Here is what I have on the Russian Auxiliary General Intelligence (AGI) ship deployed from the Black Sea Fleet to provide on-site SIGINT coverage for the Kremlin:
The deployment comes in conjunction with the impending (possible) planned military intervention against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Russia has dispatched the ‘Priazyovye’ (SSV-201) to the Mediterranean to gather information on the area’s escalating conflict. SSV-201 is normally home ported in Sevastopol. The image is of Priazyovye’s sister SSV-208, a Pacific Fleet unit of the same class.
The ship is intended to operate separately from the warships permanently deployed to the Russian naval facility at Tartus, Syria. We used to call the Soviet trawlers that followed us around “tattle-tales,” since their mission was to provide final target information for Long Range Aviation (LRA) TU-95 Bear Deltas and TU-22M Backfire bombers to attack us with AS-5 and AS-6 air-to-surface supersonic cruise missiles.
SSV-201 is a modern late construction complete SIGINT collection package. It could provide significant early warning of missle launches against Syrian targets. It could also provide targetting on the US warships, and demonstrates the complexity of the problem.
It was unclear how many naval vessels Russia would have in the region once the missile cruiser CGG Moskva (ex-Slava) of the Black Sea Fleet arrives from its current deployment in the Northern Atlantic. Moskva has a formidable anti-surface capability, carrying 16 SSN-12 SANDBOX missiles which have a range of over 300 nm and carry a 2,000LB conventional payload, enough to ruin your day. SSV-201 could provide fine-grained target information on the US warships.
(CG Mosvka, ex-Slava)
The commander of the Russian navy, ADM Viktor Chirkov, told Zvezda television this week that Russia “should have five or six vessels permanently deployed in the Mediterranean,” but did not say how many were already in the area.
Due to commitments to US CENTCOM in the Indian Ocean, the USN has four DDG’s on station with another enroute. An LA-Class SSN is also reportedly on patrol off the coast of Syria. This is a dramatic reduction from Cold War numbers of the USN 6th Fleet- I remember the controversy when the number of carrier strike groups was reduced from two to “only” one. Horrors!
USS Mahan (DDG-72) (above) was slated to leave the region and be replaced by USS Ramage (DDG-61) for a ballistic missile defense (BMD) patrol in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility. Now both ships, along with USS Barry (DDG-52) and USS Gravely (DDG-107) will remain on station, while USS Stout (DDG-55) is inbound.
Other NATO presence: some sources allege French AGI DUPUY DE LOME is currently also in the EastMed.
(A-79 Dupuy de Lome.)
The Royal Navy has a rapid deployment presence in the Med, including an SSN, two frigates and the helicopter carrier HMS Illustrious, although Prime Minister Cameron has disavowed any engagement in an US attack.
(UK Through-deck Cruiser HMS Illustrious).
The numbers are sort of pathetic by Cold War standards: a single Carrier Strike Group has more capability than everything everyone has in the region at the moment. But these forces all have formidable capabilities, and could be augmented by US air assets deployed to the Med and B-2 Spirit stealth bombers launched from as far away as Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
If Congress says OK, that is. What a world. I have no idea what is going to happen except that this is a policy disaster.
That is the OPINTEL wrap from the EasMed this morning.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Different Strokes
(Entering the Big Pink Pool. Photos by Miłosz Borkowski with the underwater Nikonos.)
I was whistling “LA Woman,” by the Doors this morning, since “This is the End” is too dark for such a bright morning. It seems to fit- we blasted through the summer like a speeding convertible on the I-5. We left August behind last night, and will be leaving more in the wake of time shortly.
As you know, it has been a brutal couple weeks. While many of us vacationed, the plump little dictator in the Hermit Kingdom had his ex-girlfriend- a noted North Korean pop-singer- executed by firing squad along with other members of her band.
They say it was treason- but informed word is that the Outstanding Leader was prompted to order the killings by his new wife, a former band-mate, to take the action. Here, we would just un-Friend them on Facebook, but different strokes, I guess.
(A different stroke, Big Pink style.)
The helicopter seeds of the maples around the pool at Big Pink are starting to come down in bushels, presaging the Fall to come. College football lurched into action, though I paid no attention. I did not even look at the scores until late this morning, having been dragged unwillingly into tangled discussions of threats to our First and Second Amendment rights.
I would urge you to join in the fray between the Daily Kos and the plucky little newspaper on the Front Range in Colorado, the Pueblo Chieftain, but after writing to support them I have lost energy. Check out the conflict on my Facebook page if you have the inclination.
I am not going to get into that with you this morning- nor Marilyn Hagerty’s review of the Olive Garden Restaurant in Grand Forks, North Dakota. That at least represents a controversy that does not pit the forces of Progressivism against the arch-opponents on the Right. The hipsters who made fun of her obviously have never spent much time out on the Great Prairie, and maybe that actually is a part of the conflict that seems to be tearing us apart.
In that light, I have had feedback that my increasing desperation with the politics of this Republic appears externally to have roots with the Koch Brothers and Big Oil. So I am just going to concentrate this morning on something visceral and real: the pool.
Ann, Queen of the Dogs, came up with the idea of throwing a real American Barbeque for the Polish Life Guards who have patrolled the pool over the last ninety days. All the poolside residents thought it was a great idea, Tony, Jane and me, and we all kicked in the ingredients to make it something special.
I am going to miss swimming daily in a big way. It is the only way I have been able to salvage some mobility in the long and incomplete recovery from surgery last year. The last day of the regular season is tomorrow, and I almost cannot bear the thought.
Off to the farm, after a refreshing and therapeutic dip. Almost the last one.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com