Numbers tell interesting stories; some people become quite fascinated with them. In monitoring government programs perhaps the key number that will be quoted is how much money went into the program. I suppose the analogy in the private sector is market capitalization, or, more simply, how much is something worth, how much wealth has been […]

Editor’s Note, 04 November 2019: this is timely and goes in front of the roll-out of the Mac Showers biography trilogy which has slipped to tomorrow. – Vic . Author’s Note: Several long talks with a couple of old friends (Navy and Marine) this week – we are much worse than it looks I’m afraid… […]

During the previous administration a number of retired senior officers received public scorn for making disparaging remarks about President Obama. Many in the press commented that not only were the remarks inappropriate, but that under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) they might be charged. Seeming to confirm that position, last February the Supreme […]

Queen Victoria’s 6th Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, oversaw the British Empire at a time when it was nearing its greatest power (a total of 16 years as Foreign Secretary and 9 years as Prime Minister). Palmerston was quite willing to engage in all sorts of foreign actions, sticking the British “nose” into virtually every corner […]

Queen Victoria’s 6th Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, oversaw the British Empire at a time when it was nearing its greatest power (a total of 16 years as Foreign Secretary and 9 years as Prime Minister). Palmerston was quite willing to engage in all sorts of foreign actions, sticking the British “nose” into virtually every corner […]

Imagine a US Army force of 13,500 soldiers, cornered by a much larger enemy force, on the other side of the world. What should we do to rescue them? Is there any cost too high to pay to get those Americans out of the way of the enemy buzz saw? In Syria the Turkish army […]

George Santayana, the brilliant, Spanish-born American philosopher, is well remembered for having said (among a host of other things) that: “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Indeed. We need to remember the past, and learn from history, we need to learn from the mistakes of others. But we also need […]

Editor’s Note: Happy (Fiscal) New Year! At midnight, some of us will time-travel to FY 2020. Bureaucrats, bag-men and contractors across The Swamp and celebrate the arrival of new truckloads of taxpayer cash arriving in the capital and will have a sip of bubbly before going back for each other’s throats. Could be an interesting […]

I had a commanding officer who used to regularly quote Vice Admiral Buckeley, his favorite one being: “I’ve seen clean ships that couldn’t fight, but I’ve never seen a dirty one that could.” Bulkeley, who commanded Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 in the Philippines at the start of WWII, would go on to have 11 […]

Henry Ford famously noted that: “History is bunk.” Hmmm… On 14 September Houthis rebels (from Yemen), a de facto proxy force of the government of Iran, attacked the largest single oil refinery complex in the world – the Abqaiq complex in eastern Saudi Arabia, about 40 miles southwest of Dhahran. The specifics are still not […]